


So It Goes

by Nomad (nomadicwriter)



Series: So It Goes [1]
Category: West Wing - Fandom
Genre: 1960s, Backstory, Child Abuse, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2002-11-12
Updated: 2002-11-11
Packaged: 2017-10-06 00:18:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 28,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/47601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nomadicwriter/pseuds/Nomad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jed Bartlet. Abigail Barrington. 1967.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I

**Spoilers: ** Minor up to "Night Five".  
**Disclaimer: ** I do not own Jed and Abbey. Which is just as well, because I really don't have room to house them. Let alone the Secret Service agents.  
**Author's Note: ** Title springs from a line in the Elvis song "Can't Help Falling in Love".

* * *

** I **

He was shaken awake by a rough hand on his shoulder that it took him a moment to realise couldn't be his brother Jonathan. "Jed, come on, you're late!"

He flopped onto the floor with a groan. Yet again, his roommates had decided to invite half of South Bend to stay over, and yet again, he'd somehow been voted the one to sleep on the couch. Never mind the fact that he actually lived here; apparently, being too tall to sleep comfortably trumped minor things like paying rent.

Well, he hadn't slept comfortably either, and if Jed Bartlet was too tall to sleep comfortably, then sleeping comfortably wasn't an option.

Jed was beginning to suspect that he didn't have much in common with his roommates; even the ones who actually lived here. They only wanted to drink - which he didn't do - plays sports - which he wasn't big enough or co-ordinated enough to do - and talk about girls. Which was _definitely_ off the menu.

And, they never understood why he got knotted up about things like missing classes or being late for work.

His father hadn't approved of his decision to get a part-time job, which was, if he was honest, his biggest motivation in sticking to it. The Bartlets certainly didn't need what little money he could earn, but Jed liked the feeling working for his money gave him. For a start, it made him feel less like he was indebted to his father - and if there was one person in the world he didn't want to be indebted to, it was John Bartlet Senior.

Of course, that only held true for as long as he could actually keep the job... He could only imagine his father's reaction to Jed getting fired for persistent lateness. Equal parts anger, contempt, and worse, a kind of smug satisfaction that Jed had never been able to understand.

Why did his own father always take some kind of twisted pleasure in seeing his son humbled or defeated?

It was the vision of that all-too-familiar reaction that powered him as he biked through the sunny streets at speed. For all that it was early fall, the weather was still surprisingly warm - or maybe that was just his New Hampshire roots showing.

He coasted downhill to the bookstore, and chained his bike up out the back. His friend Ben gave him a nod as he walked in. "Little late?" he observed fairly neutrally.

"Nobody woke me up," he explained.

Ben snorted. "You're really gonna have to do something about that before it comes to doing morning Mass, you know that?"

"That's why I'm only a _trainee_ priest," he said dryly.

"Ah. Take the cash register?"

"Sure."

The store was fairly slow this early on a Saturday morning. Jed allowed himself the luxury of sneaking off to the chess books and pulling down a volume to get involved in while he sat behind the counter. He didn't actually have anybody to play against out here, but that didn't mean he couldn't teach himself.

He was in the middle of committing a fairly complex sequence to memory when a feminine cough finally penetrated his consciousness.

"Uh, hello? A little service, maybe?"

"Oh, sorry." He quickly hid the book away behind the counter and looked up to see a pretty girl with her arms folded impatiently. "What can I do?" he asked.

"I need to get one of the medical texts from the top shelf and-" she took him in as he stood up- "and now I'm thinking I should probably have asked somebody, you know, tall."

"Hey! I have skills," he shrugged defensively.

She smirked, but in a way that made him want to smile back. "I'm sure you do," she agreed dryly.

"Which book?" he asked, walking with her over to the medical section. She was right, the relatively small height advantage he had on her wasn't going to help him much. But he wasn't about to admit that.

"The medical dictionary." Well, it had to be the biggest, heaviest book on the shelf, didn't it? "But don't worry about it, I'll get-"

"I can get it," he insisted quickly.

Jed cautiously tested his weight bracing a foot against the bottom shelf, and stretched up to the reach the book. He could _just_ about grasp- ah, there, that was- oops.

"Whoa! Careful there, skilful." The dictionary came crashing to the floor, and he bit back a most un-priestly curse as it landed on his foot. "Bet that hurt," she observed wryly.

"It's fine," he lied.

"Are you sure?" she asked, sounding more concerned. "I'm gonna be going to medical school soon, so-"

"Well, good, 'cause I'm glad I got that book down for a reason." He smiled at her. "Want me to ring this up for you?"

"Thanks."

He tried not to limp too noticeably on his way back to the cash register. He checked the price. "Okay, that'll be-"

Jed was cut off as he looked up in time to see a tall, broad-shouldered football-player type come up behind the girl and slip his arms around her waist. "A little light reading?" he asked, as she leaned back comfortably against his chest.

"Hey, one of us had to be the brain here," she said playfully. Jed thought that any girl on her way to medical school had more than a slight edge on her jock boyfriend, and then told himself off for the uncharitable thought. He didn't even know this guy. It was just the lingering flavour of public embarrassment making him poorly disposed towards this guy who could've lifted a stupid book off the top shelf without making a complete idiot of himself.

And it was probably the same thing that made his teeth grate when the possible-jock-boyfriend smirked down at his girlfriend. "Oh, admit it, you just like playing doctor."

"In your dreams, honey," she said, dry but still vaguely flirtatious. Jed decided he'd witnessed quite enough of _that_, and cleared his throat pointedly.

"Oh yeah, thanks, kid." The boyfriend took the bagged dictionary and passed across a few bills without even looking at him. The girl wrinkled her brow at him.

"You're buying me books now?"

"I'll buy you anything you like, baby. After all, you're the one who's gonna be keeping me when you're a big high-flying doctor."

It was like he didn't even exist in the room anymore. Jed passed across the boy's change and scowled to himself as the young couple left the store, arm in arm. Huh. Romance. All these people were so shallow and self-obsessed. He was willing to bet jock-boy there had never entertained thoughts of dedicating his life to serving God.

And where did he get off with calling him 'kid', anyway? He couldn't possibly have been eighteen months older than Jed, tops. Just because a guy was a little on the short side and had better things to do than drool over the nearest pretty girl all the time...

A paperback book bounced off the back of his head.

"Hey, Father J!" Ben called good-naturedly. "Quit watching the girls go by and get back to work."

Jed shook his head, and returned to his chess book.

* * *

Jed frowned over his textbook, and rubbed his forehead. Theology was a fascinating subject, but there were times when he ached for something that didn't feel quite so much like he was pouring his whole soul into it. It always seemed like the more he studied, the more he realised that he couldn't begin to learn, and that was a heady, almost frightening feeling. He'd always lived for knowledge, soaked it up like a sponge, and here he was throwing himself into the middle of a pool of it that was far too vast for him to ever completely absorb.

He wanted to dedicate his life to God. That decision was easy, so easy that his thoughts slid over it now without catching on the edges, no longer seeing it as anything but the only possible future. But sometimes, sometimes he wondered if he didn't think too much to be a priest. And wasn't that a terrible thought, a sinfully proud and terrible thought? But no, not quite like that, just...

Just... what if you had the kind of mind that always kept seeing the bigger picture? Always kept stretching, pushing at the edges, couldn't stay boxed up like other people wanted, like his father had always wanted. What if you had that kind of mind, and you used it to keep thinking about things like God and souls and good and evil and humanity, things that you couldn't quite fit inside your head but you had to keep _trying_...

He wanted to be a priest. He wanted to help people. It was all he'd ever wanted. But sometimes, Jed couldn't help thinking that maybe he'd sleep a little better if he spent his time on the kind of questions where you could just come to an answer and then stop.

The sound of the door announced the arrival of his roommates, and the end to any chance at quiet study. Jason and Andrew appeared on the scene with a flood of raucous laughter and a jangle of keys.

"Jed!" Jason thumped him on the shoulder cheerfully. "Man, still haven't figured out the meaning of the universe yet?"

"I would, but people keep interrupting me," he said dryly. They both laughed.

"Coming to the party tonight?" Andy asked him.

"What party?" he frowned, more for conversation than out of curiosity.

"Up at Terry's place. Come on, it'll be fun," Jason urged.

Jed sat back, rubbing his eyes from too long spent on studying. "I don't-"

"You need to party, man! You are in serious need of some relaxation. Come on, what's the worst that could happen?"

"I spend several hours crammed in a room with people I don't know, listening to music I don't like, and then one of you gets drunk and pukes on me?"

"See? Where's the harm in that?" Andy demanded cheerfully.

"I'm... not a big fan of puking, I have to say," he pointed out dryly.

"Well, that's what we have bathrooms for!" Jason yanked him to his feet. "Oh, come on, man, you've been hitting those books for like fifteen hours straight. You need a break."

"I guess," he admitted, although his own idea of a break was something a whole lot quieter than a student party.

"Yeah, see? We're your buddies, we'll look out for you. We'll make sure you have a great time."

"Suddenly, I'm very scared," he noted, as they steered him inexorably towards the door.


	2. II

** II **

Jed sighed heavily. Nobody heard. Nobody would have heard him if he'd been screaming. Which might be a handy little fact to know if he stayed here much longer.

The party had been... pretty much what he expected. A whole lot of people drinking alcohol, and apparently unable to cope with the concept that he didn't want to join them. He'd lost count of how many drinks he'd been handed and passed on or put down somewhere. There wasn't any particular reason he didn't drink alcohol, he just... didn't want to. He liked his brain fine as clear as it was, thank you.

Unfortunately, it seemed that having a clear brain severely impaired your ability to enjoy parties. Well, that and the fact that had he been in any position to try and get anywhere with those few girls willing to talk to the short, miserable-looking guy in the corner, the music was cranked up way too high for him to do it. He couldn't talk to people, he didn't know anybody here anyway, and there wasn't anything else for a socially reticent potential priest to do.

Andy and Jason had disappeared. Not that it really mattered, because last time he'd seen them they'd been both so drunk he wouldn't have accepted a ride back home if it was offered. They were probably going to crash out here for the rest of the night, if they didn't find girls to go home with.

Just think, if he'd refused to come he could have been at home right now, with the whole place to himself.

The party was showing no signs of ending any time soon. The thought of sticking it out until the early hours of the morning... He headed for the door.

The cool air outside was a refreshing blast against his face. Jed turned his face to the sky, and saw clouds gathering. Right now, a storm seemed like a good way to break the muggy tension in the air.

There was nobody about outside; cars were parked in the road, but there was no traffic. They'd come a long way out of town, and the thought of walking all the way home was just depressing. He'd follow the road, and see if he could hitch a ride.

Nobody noticed him as he slipped away into the night. Jed tugged his jacket closer about him, and started walking.

* * *

Football. Abigail Barrington could take it or leave it.

When it came to football on a fall evening that was now turning decidedly chilly and looking like it might storm, she was definitely leaning towards leaving it.

Still, she couldn't help grinning as Ron came jogging toward her in his football gear. She might not be the world's biggest sports fan, but it made Ron happy, and she guessed she owed him something for the fact he never complained when she bored him stupid with her medical studies. She knew he thought she was more than a little obsessed, cramming before she even _started_ medical school, but being a doctor like her father was all she'd ever wanted to do. She was taking no chances.

Ron beamed brightly at her. "Did you see me?" he asked eagerly. Abbey rolled her eyes.

"No, 'cause I was so busy snoring-"

He leaned in to steal a kiss. "I say again, if you would only let me explain football-"

"I already _get_ football," she snorted. "There is a ball. You move it around the pitch and try to get it in the goal. Did I miss anything?"

"Only a lifetime of glory, dreams, and athletic prowess." He kissed her again.

"You only do that to stop me arguing, don't you?"

"Yeah, that's the main reason," he said dryly.

"How's that working for you so far?"

He grinned and shook his head, conceding defeat. "Listen, how'd you get out here? D'you need a ride back?"

Abbey tilted her head pointedly, and dangled the keys to the family pick-up. "Daddy didn't raise no fools," she smirked.

Ron shrugged good-naturedly. "You can't blame a boy for trying."

"Try telling that to daddy," she said dryly.

"Yeah, maybe not," he admitted. "Listen, can I see you tomorrow morning?"

"I'll be at church."

"Oh, yeah, course." Ron shook his head. Although ostensibly Catholic, Ron's family didn't take their religion nearly as seriously as the Barringtons. She sometimes got the impression he didn't really understand that she went along to church every week because she thought it was important, not just because her parents made her. "Tomorrow afternoon, then?"

"Sure," she agreed with a smile.

He stood and grinned adorably after her as she left. Yeah, a few boring football games were a pretty small price to pay for a boyfriend who thought you were the best thing since sliced bread.

* * *

The car squealed past him in a flurry of water. Jed would have been soaked, if it wasn't for the fact that the rain had already taken care of that. It was less priestly instinct than a kind of resigned soggy misery that stopped him from flipping off the driver.

It had been raining continuously for... well, he had no idea how long. It had reached the point where it was like trying to push through a vertical block of solid water, and he wouldn't have been able to see his watch face even if he'd dared expose it to this kind of rain to try.

Maybe, Jed conceded, hitching home hadn't been such a hot idea after all. He hadn't realised how quiet this road was until he'd been walking it too far to turn back. Barely a half dozen cars had gone past him, and once the rain had started, they probably hadn't seen him anyway.

Headlights, behind him. He didn't even bother to stop walking, just mechanically thrust out an arm with thumb upraised.

A mud-splattered red pick-up squealed to a halt. He dashed towards it through the rain as the passenger door opened for him.

The instinct to scramble inside was momentarily hijacked by surprise as he saw that the driver was a girl. To be precise, the exact same girl who'd caused him to drop a medical dictionary on himself that morning.

"Hey there, bookstore boy, fancy meeting you here," she smiled.

Jed frowned in concern. "Hey, what are you doing stopping?"

"You were hitching, weren't you?"

"Yeah... you shouldn't pick up strange guys at the side of the road." He shuddered to think what might happen to a pretty young girl picking up hitchhikers in the middle of the night.

"You're only little; I could take you," she quipped confidently.

He scowled. "I could be a psychopath or anything!"

She snorted in dry amusement. "D'you want a ride or not?"

Jed hesitated.

The rain was hammering against his back like a particularly unsuccessful attempt at a vigorous massage.

He got in.

The girl gave a satisfied nod, and restarted the pick-up. "You're going into South Bend, right?" she asked after a moment, eyes on the road as she drove.

"Yeah."

The cab was beginning to steam up with their combined breath, but the water dripping down his back and from his hair was painfully cold. He shifted in the seat, wishing awkwardly there was some way he could stop himself from drenching the upholstery.

"My house is just on the edge of town," the girl nodded. "But I can drop you down by the bookstore if you like - you live round there, right?"

"You don't have to do that," Jed said quickly. She briefly flicked her eyes away from the road to shoot him a look.

"You're kidding, right? You could _drown_ out there."

"I could hitch another ride. I don't want to take you out of your way."

"Oh, and you were doing so well at that before I came along? I'll take you down to the town," she said, in a tone that brooked no argument.

They drove on. Jed fidgeted in his seat, discomfited by the closeness of the small cab and the way the rain outside made it seem smaller.

"You really shouldn't have picked me up," he told her quietly, after a few minutes of silence.

She gave a dryly amused smile that was already becoming quite familiar, but her tone stayed light, perhaps acknowledging his concern for her safety. "If it bothers you that much, why'd you let me pick you up?"

"In case you picked somebody else up along the way, and they really _were_ crazy." He shifted in his seat. "Also, it was raining."

She smiled, and although her eyes were on the road and not on him it was impossible not to smile back. "You got a name, bookstore boy?"

For some reason, the full name he usually introduced himself by didn't trip immediately from his lips. "Jed," he said quickly. "Jed Bartlet."

She nodded to herself. "Abbey Barrington. And I know we're not exactly meeting, but, you know, pleased to... whatever."

He smiled. They drove on into the storm.


	3. III

** III **

"I think the rain's getting worse," her passenger observed.

"You should be a meteorologist," Abbey told him, rolling her eyes. The storm wasn't just getting heavier, it was getting darker out there, and it was increasingly difficult to see the edges of the road. For all that her companion seemed convinced that she'd put her life in her hands by picking him up, she was glad she wasn't alone out here.

Truth to tell, his concern was quite sweet, really. She honestly hadn't even thought about any possible danger - the same humanitarian instinct that drove her to want to be a doctor had insisted that anybody crazy enough to be out in this weather deserved any help she could give.

Little guys with wide, innocent blue eyes who worked in bookstores couldn't be that dangerous, right? Besides, Abbey had never been a weak little thing or a shrinking violet. Her parents had raised her to be bold, confident and trust her instincts, and her instincts had said to offer the guy a ride home.

Although it looked like she might have to renege on part of that offer.

"This is my turnoff," she nodded towards it. "I'm sorry, it doesn't look like I'll be able to take you the rest of the way into town. It's way too wet out there to keep driving."

"Hey, that's okay," he insisted quickly. Bookshop boy - aka Mr. Jed Bartlet - she'd quickly discovered was the apologetic sort. He was so determined not to be any trouble she was tempted to smack him.

"Here we go." They pulled up outside her house, and Jed quickly scrambled out. The torrential rain immediately flattened his hair to his scalp.

"I can walk from here," he insisted, raising his voice over the rain.

Abbey stared at him in disbelief as huge globules of water melted through her own hair. "Are you crazy?" she shouted.

"What?"

She grabbed him by the hand and dragged him towards the house.

"You can't walk in that!" she yelled close to his ear as they sheltered by the front door. She scrabbled for her key.

"I-"

"For God's sake, come _in_." She yanked the front door open and pulled him through it. They both stumbled into the hall, shedding water. "Hello?" Abbey called. No answer. "I guess they're still out."

The look of panic that crossed his face was almost hysterically funny. "I can't- I can't just come in here while your parents are out and just- You don't even know me!"

"Jed." She grabbed him by the shoulders, perhaps to stop him actually running away, and looked him sternly in the eye. "You are wet. You are cold. If you go back out there into that storm, you're probably going to end up with pneumonia. Now. You're going to stay here, I'll put the heater on, and you can sit in front of it until the rain lets up a bit and then I'll drive you home. Okay?"

He held her gaze for a long beat, and then reluctantly grinned. "You really are going to be a doctor, aren't you?"

She smiled back. "Come on. I'll fix you some coffee or something, and- God, you really are wet there, aren't you? I tell you what. You can borrow one of my brother's sweatshirts. You seriously need to get out of that shirt."

Jed shook his head. "Oh, no, I couldn't-"

"He's away at college, he won't miss it," Abbey cut him off quickly. "Come with me. His room's just up here."

Jed smiled helplessly and trailed after her. "Anybody ever tell you you're kind of bossy?"

She folded her arms. "Yeah, you want to make something of it?"

"No, ma'am," he grinned at her.

* * *

"So you live down in South Bend?" Abbey's voice floated through from the next room as he searched somewhat uncomfortably through her brother's clothes for something that might fit. Apparently Matthew Barrington was a good deal broader about the shoulders than he was; most of these jerseys would swamp him.

"Uh, I rent a place with two other guys," he called back. "I'm at Notre Dame." Ah, there, a faded grey sweatshirt in the bottom of the drawer that its owner had probably grown out of. That made him feel considerably less discomfited by the thought of briefly borrowing it.

"Oh, right. What are you studying?"

"Theology," he replied, voice muffled as he pulled his soaked undershirt over his head.

"What was that?" Abbey appeared in the doorway, and Jed flushed crimson, caught with the sweatshirt held in front of his bare chest. "Sorry!" She held up her hands in apology and turned away, but he saw her smile slightly to herself as she did it.

Jed tugged the sweatshirt swiftly over his head and tried to pretend his cheeks weren't dusted with the pink of embarrassment. Flashing his skinny, I-lived-all-my-life-in-New-Hampshire pale chest at random girls wasn't something he was in the habit of doing.

"What was that you said you were studying?" she rescued him, still looking out into the hallway.

He came out to join her. "Uh, theology." _I'm going to be a priest._

Funny how that second bit didn't make it out loud.

"Oh."

Most people said 'oh' when he told them what he was doing at college. Aside from his father, who'd had some altogether more choice words for it, and some stinging blows to season them. Was it so strange, to want to study theology? To know, even as young as he was, that you wanted to dedicate your life to God?

Abbey leaned towards the window, and flicked back the corner of the curtain. "Still raining."

"Really?" he said dryly. She smiled at him.

"Come on. I'll make some coffee and we can listen to the radio or something until it lets up a bit."

* * *

Abbey watched him out of the corner of her eye, smiling to herself. Sitting on the floor of her parents' front room with his head resting back against the couch, he was supposedly listening to the soft drone of the radio, but she could see he was falling asleep.

Jed had insisted, with a quite ridiculous level of enthusiasm, that they listen to some political speech or other that was going on - and had then proceeded to babble right over it, adding his own commentary, going off at tangents, and occasionally sharply contradicting what was said.

Surprisingly, he was interesting to listen to. His droll sense of humour and the twinkle in his eye livened up the less-than-thrilling points he found so vitally important, and she found it was a refreshing change from the other people her age who only seemed to want to talk about sports or fashion or who'd been seen holding hands with who last weekend.

When the speech had turned to healthcare she'd told him about her desire to go to medical school, and he'd _listened_. Most people didn't listen; they'd say "Wow, I wish I was smart enough to do that" or - if they were guys - congratulate her in that condescending way that said "Aww, aren't you a good girl, playing at doing a proper job", but none of them actually wanted to _hear_ about it.

Except for Ron, of course. He loved to show off his smart girlfriend to everyone he knew, and he was proud of her big dreams, but Abbey didn't like to talk to him about it too much because she knew he found the medical stuff boring and difficult to follow. So she didn't bore him with medical school and he didn't bore her with football, and they were both happy.

But still, it was good to talk to somebody who was actually genuinely interested. She caught herself several times at the point when Ron's gaze would be beginning to wander, but Jed was attentive, asking her questions, intrigued by every little detail. He seemed to have some insatiable thirst to know everything there was to know about everything.

They talked for a long time, while the storm hammered on. Abbey glanced at the rain-sprayed window now, and saw that it was no better. She could shake him awake, but why bother? She was beginning to feel a little dozy herself, and she knew she wouldn't be safe on the roads until the visibility was better.

The rain and the radio were soothing together. She watched Jed slump ever-so-slowly forward, unable to suppress a smile of amusement. He was very cute, in a bright-eyed, over-animated way, like a young boy shoved into the body of an adolescent to gaze at the world in wide-eyed wonder. She wondered if perhaps it hadn't been that almost child-like nature that had prompted her to trust him when he was hitching in the rain; somebody with such an angelically open smile surely couldn't be hiding any menace underneath.

Jed was a genuinely nice, sweet guy. What were the odds on meeting one of those, just by random chance?

While she was still musing on that, she fell asleep.

* * *

Daniel Barrington nodded to himself in quiet satisfaction as he saw the pick-up parked by the side of the house. He thought the gesture had gone unnoticed, but Mary gave him a sharp look.

"Daniel," she said, with a warning smile.

"What?" he said innocently.

"She's your daughter, don't you trust her?"

"Of course I do. Abigail's a very sensible girl. But I know what teenage boys are like with their girlfriends."

"So I recall... I was the girlfriend." His wife smiled playfully at him, and he smiled back and took her hand.

They entered the house together. "Abbey?" he called, raising his voice slightly. He stopped abruptly as he walked into the front room.

Abbey was just sitting up, hair mussed, as if she'd been asleep. Pushing himself up into a startled sitting position across the room was a youth he'd never seen before.

Abbey's eyes widened as she registered his presence. "Dad!"

Daniel narrowed his eyes in disbelief. "Abigail? What on earth is going on here?"


	4. IV

** IV **

The strange boy scrambled swiftly to his feet. "Sir, I-"

"I think you'd better wait in my study, son," Daniel said coldly. Mary grasped his arm in warning.

"Daniel."

"I'd like to talk to my daughter alone for a moment," was all he said.

"Yes, sir," the boy nodded quickly and nervously, and headed towards the study. Well, at least he had good manners. Which was something he always looked for in strange teenage boys found sleeping in an empty house with his daughter.

Daniel turned a sternly confused gaze on said daughter. "Abigail?"

He wasn't sure whether to admire or be frustrated by the way she'd recovered her poise. "Hi, dad. That's Jed. I was gonna give him a ride home, but the rain got too bad so we stopped here, and..." she looked embarrassed- "I guess we kind of fell asleep."

Of course, he hadn't expected any less innocent a story than that, but still... He wasn't sure it was Abigail's part in this he was worried about. "A ride home from where?"

"I drove past him. He was trying to hitchhike in the rain."

Beside him, Mary sucked in a dismayed breath to match his own jolted heart. "Oh, Abigail," she said, shaking her head.

"Abigail Anne Barrington, you picked up a hitchhiker on the road at night?" he demanded, feeling his voice beginning to thunder despite his personal pact not to shout at his children as his own father had always done.

"I know him!" she said, defensively enough that he knew she realised it was dangerously stupid. "His name's Jed Bartlet, he works at the bookstore down in South Bend."

"His name's Jed Bartlet, and he works in the bookstore," Daniel echoed. "Fascinating, I'm sure, but exactly which part of your highly detailed knowledge of this boy persuaded you that it was safe to let him into your vehicle when you were driving alone at night?"

"That's exactly what he said," Abbey said wryly. He questioned her with an eyebrow. "He told me I was an idiot for stopping to pick him up, and that he was only getting in the truck in case I stopped for anybody else and they really were a psychopath. _Dad_," she pleaded for his understanding. "I'm not- I wouldn't have let just anybody in. But I've met him, he's a nice guy, and you saw what the weather was like..."

"Abbey..." Daniel sighed, shaking his head. He never could stay angry at his daughter for long. He moved towards and squeezed her shoulder gently. "I know you're a smart, brave, and thoughtful young lady, but there are a _lot_ of crazy people in this world, and one day that kind heart of yours is going to get you into trouble. I _worry_ about you."

"I'm sorry, daddy," she said, beginning to look upset, and he reached down to give her a tight hug and kiss her hair.

"Well, there wasn't any harm done tonight, but I think I'd like to have a few words with this Jed character myself."

"Dad... please don't get mad at him," she urged worriedly. "He really didn't push his way in or anything, he was gonna try and walk home in the middle of the storm until I made him come in and get dry."

Knowing his daughter, that was probably nothing less than the truth. She really _was_ far too compassionate for her own good.

As he turned towards the study, Mary gave him a look, which he deflected with a neutral gaze. "I just want to _talk_ to the boy," he insisted defensively.

* * *

Jed fiddled nervously with the chess pieces arrayed on Dr. Barrington's desk. He hoped he hadn't got Abbey into serious trouble. He knew he never should have let her talk him into coming inside.

It had been nice, though, just to sit and talk. Abbey... got him. He wasn't sure if he'd ever met anybody who got him like that before, except for maybe Mrs. Landingham. She seemed to understand the way he felt about things, the sense he had of... of being plugged into a great big, wider world, being a part of something enormous. Most of the people he talked to, they only thought about small things, about everyday things. But when Abbey had talked about going to medical school, he'd seen an echo of the feeling he had, what he'd always thought was some kind of spiritual call to the priesthood.

He hadn't realised there were other people out there who dreamed the way that he did.

He wished Abbey's father had sent him to wait somewhere else. This study felt and smelt too much like his own father's office back home, where he'd stood with his head bowed and waited for approval - and never received it.

The familiarity of chess pieces calmed his nerves, and he worked through sequences of moves as he stood by the desk, losing himself in the intricacies of the one-sided game until he could forget why he was waiting.

He was reaching for a knight, and knocked it over as he was startled by a throat being cleared behind him.

"So... Jed Bartlet, my daughter said your name is?" Dr. Barrington gazed at him sternly.

"Uh, yes sir," he answered quickly, hurriedly resetting the chess piece on the board.

The doctor's expression remained stormily imposing. "And what, pray tell, did you think you were doing getting into a car with my daughter in the middle of the night?"

Jed's face burned with the flame of a guilty conscience, and he looked down at the floor awkwardly. "I'm sorry, sir, I- I was trying to hitch a ride, I didn't expect- She offered me a ride, and I guess I was worried she might stop for somebody else, and they might be-"

Amazingly, Abbey's father gave him a wisp of a smile. "Yes, I'm quite familiar with my daughter's altruistic streak." His face hardened again. "What were you doing out on the roads in this kind of weather?"

"Uh, I was at a party and I was trying to get home. My friends drove me there, but they were, um, they had a bit to drink and so I decided to try and hitch a ride instead."

"Have you been drinking?"

The question startled him, though it probably shouldn't have. "N-no, sir," he stuttered. "Sir, I don't drink."

"Sensible of you." Dr. Barrington nodded to himself, and then broke into a slight smile. "Relax, son, I believe you. Abbey's a smart girl, and if she says that you're not trouble then I trust her judgement." Jed decided not to mention that said judgement, while undoubtedly sound, was considerably more of a split-second thing than her father probably realised. "If anybody behaved rashly and foolishly tonight, it wasn't you."

"Oh, sir, I wouldn't-"

Dr. Barrington rolled his eyes. "You can stop apologising for my daughter now, Jed."

He barely managed to choke off the automatic 'sorry, sir'.

The doctor nodded down at the chessboard. "You play chess?"

"Uh, yes, sir, a little. I don't play against other people so much, but I read a lot of books."

"Well then, sit down, son, and why don't we see if that book learning has done you any good."

He wouldn't have dared to refuse if he'd wanted to.

* * *

Abbey couldn't help but smile as she hovered in the study doorway, watching Jed and her father play chess. Neither of them looked up or noticed her there; Jed's lower lip was stuck out in a pout of concentration as he contemplated his next move.

Her mother came over to stand next to her, and smiled herself. "Men and their little competitions," she said, fondly shaking her head.

"Dad seems to have taken to him," she observed.

"Well, dear, you know he's been itching for an excuse to break out that chess set ever since I refused to play against him any longer." Abbey smirked. Her father was a terrible person to play any kind of game against, alternating between smug superiority at his victory and frustration that his opponents weren't challenging him. She didn't think Jed was winning, but at least he seemed to be holding his own.

"Do you think they even know we're here?"

"I imagine they'll be like this for hours."

"We're concentrating, not deaf," said her father lightly, as he slid a bishop across the board. Jed winced and lowered his head to study the board at eye-level.

Abbey hid a smile at his intent expression; her mother didn't bother. "Would you like some cocoa there, boys?"

"Thank you, Mary."

"Yes please, Mrs. Barrington, ma'am."

Her mother's smile widened with amusement. "Abigail, where _did_ you find this darling boy?" she asked.

"In a soggy heap by the side of the road," she supplied.

"Well, I think we're going to have to keep him."

Jed looked up, and flashed a brilliant smile. Abbey was powerless to avoid grinning right back. He held her gaze for a moment, and then turned quickly back to the chessboard. She followed her mother through into the kitchen.

* * *

"Thank you, Mrs. Barrington." Jed took the steaming mug gratefully. This chess match was taking it out of him. His brief doze in the front room had done more to make his eyes gritty and head heavy than refresh him, and Dr. Barrington was such a good chess player that it was taking all his concentration to just not be embarrassingly defeated.

A sip of cocoa provided an excuse to sit back a moment, and his eyes fell for the first time on the wall clock. He started at the time. "Oh! It's very late. I'm sorry, I should probably be leaving soon."

Mrs. Barrington smiled at him. "Oh, don't be ridiculous, Jed. It's still raining, and you'll catch your death of cold out there. I'll make up Matthew's bed for you and you can sleep here tonight."

He was startled by the offer. "Oh, no, I couldn't," he protested.

"Ah, so you'll sleep on my floor uninvited but you won't stay when we ask you to?" said Dr. Barrington mildly, effortless sliding a rook through his defences. Jed blushed, started to speak, paused to pull a face at the condition of the chessboard, and tried again.

"Really, sir, ma'am, you've been awfully nice to me, and I don't want to-"

Dr. Barrington leaned in conspiratorially. "It's no use arguing, son. Once she's made up her mind, she's made up her mind... no use arguing. That's how I ended up a married man, you know."

His wife swiped at him affectionately, and picked his cocoa-mug to carry out.

"Hey! I hadn't finished drinking that."

"And now you're not going to," she said sweetly. He shook his head, but smiled fondly at her.

It was all so very different from the way he remembered things being between his own father and mother that Jed felt a strange and unaccustomed pang. This was a family, a real one; not at all like he was used to. Despite what courtesy and good manners were telling him, he found that atmosphere of warmth and affection held an almost irresistible fascination for him. And when the Barringtons insisted on proceeding as if it was already settled that he would be staying with them, he found it impossible to argue.


	5. V

** V **

Jed drifted awake with customary slowness, and spent a good few minutes squinting in the sun and trying to resolve some niggling confusions. Strange bed. Unfamiliar room. Sleeping in his clothes. What...?

Ah.

As if the very memory that female people he was not related to lived in this house would summon them, Jed grabbed urgently for his shirt from the day before and tugged it on. He buttoned it swiftly and smoothed it out as well as he could, which wasn't very. Being drenched in rain and then unceremoniously dropped hadn't done it a great deal of good.

Feeling suddenly awkward and embarrassed about his presence in this house, he wished he'd dared the rain to make his escape last night. What was he thinking, accepting an invitation to stay with people he'd known for a matter of hours? It was a credit to their generosity, but he never should have stayed.

The thought of intruding on the family's Sunday morning was mortifying, but an abrupt need to use the facilities wouldn't let him hide away until someone remembered him. He padded quickly out into the hallway in his socks, trying to remember which door meant the bathroom. That one. Right.

As he approached it, the door opened, and Abbey emerged. She looked startled for a moment, and then grinned at him, unselfconscious in an overlarge shirt over pyjama bottoms and bare feet. "Hey."

"Uh... morning," he choked, momentarily experiencing a disconnection of brain and speech centres. She headed past him back to her own bedroom and, impending ordination be damned, he watched her go.

Jed Bartlet's mornings, up to this stage in his life, had not, typically, included pretty girls wandering the halls in states of semi-undress. Yes, that was a... definitely a novelty. Not an entirely unwelcome one, admittedly...

He got a hold of himself, and ducked quickly into the bathroom. Cold water splashed on his face helped. A little.

When he left the bathroom a few moments later, Dr. Barrington was crossing the hallway, managing still to look dignified even in a robe. "Good morning, Jed," he nodded, kindly enough although Jed was sure he must be resenting the intrusion.

"Good morning, sir. Uh, thank you, sir, for, for letting me stay here. I should probably be-" He pointed vaguely towards the hall downstairs and the front door, but Dr. Barrington was having none of it.

"You'll be staying for breakfast, young man," he said, in a tone that brooked no argument. "I won't have it be said that the Barringtons aren't good hosts."

"I... don't imagine that anyone could ever say that, Dr. Barrington," he said honestly.

Mrs. Barrington seemed genuinely delighted to have him there, and refused to listen to any noises he made about not needing breakfast. It suffused him with a strange blend of embarrassed gratitude and melancholy. He missed his mother with the sharpest edge in a long time. She'd died the summer before his first year of college, and he was torn between regret that she couldn't have remained for longer and relief that he'd been there at her side when it happened. Not just for his own sake; there'd been black and blue ribs over the priest he'd brought to administer the last rites, and he knew that without him there, his father would never have made any concession to her wishes.

But those were thoughts of home, and such memories were never good ones. Jed pushed them aside in favour of a happier morning born out of the generosity of strangers.

Abbey came down to the table while he was eating; dressed for company now, but he still blushed a little when he saw her, and didn't know why. If she noticed, she only smiled back at him. Despite the basic idiocy of it, his heart double-stepped for a beat.

He liked Abbey. Not for the oddly pleasant way his stomach had seemed to drop, but because he just... liked her. She was nice and smart and funny, and he'd like to be her friend.

And he thought that maybe, just maybe, after the way they'd listened to the rain and the radio and talked about their dreams and she'd laughed and smiled and _understood_ him, that she'd like to be his friend as well.

And he wasn't reading anything into the fact that such a thought made his skin tingle slightly all over. He wasn't reading anything at all.

Dr. Barrington leafed absently through the newspaper as he drank his morning coffee. "I'd like to leave early if we can, dear," he said to his wife. "I was having a most fascinating conversation with Father Clifton last week, and I'd like to catch him before the service begins if I can."

"Father Clifton?" Jed looked up at him, surprised. "That's my church," he explained as the doctor peered at him over his glasses.

"Is it?" Dr. Barrington smiled. "Excellent, then you can come to church with us."

"Sir, I- You're being far too kind to me," Jed objected.

"Anybody who thinks there's such a thing as 'too kind' is obviously an idiot," he said, with a stern cheerfulness that was a world away from the aggressively cold way his own father corrected him. "And besides, it would be desperately remiss of me to not do anything in my power to help a young man who actually _wants_ to go to church."

"Faith is important," Jed said, quietly but still forcefully.

"It is indeed," Dr. Barrington agreed, with a nod of dignified approval. Abbey smiled at him across the table.

He had a suspicion that the order of importance he ranked those gestures in was not quite the way common sense dictated it should be.

* * *

It was funny how she didn't feel more awkward hanging out with a boy she'd met barely twenty-four hours ago - okay, they'd had plenty of time trapped together talking during the storm, but even so. But Jed just felt... comfortable. He thought so like her in all sorts of little ways that it was as if he'd known him a lot longer than she really had.

And he was very cute. Not in a 'to look at' way - well, okay, maybe just a little, but she did have a boyfriend and everything - but in the way he was so over-polite and he blushed all the time. Yet she didn't think it was honestly just shyness... last night, when they'd been talking, and he'd spoken about politics and theology and dreams, any trace of hesitation had melted away, and he'd spoken like he owned the world.

She had a hunch that Mr. Jed Bartlet was going to grow up to become somebody very interesting indeed, and Abbey thought she'd rather like to get to know him well enough to tag along for the ride.

It was strange... his small stature seemed to grow less noticeable as they stepped into the church. It was something in the way he seemed so comfortable with his surroundings; other people were hesitant and careful of their actions in a house of worship, but Jed looked like he was at home there.

Father Clifton came smiling towards them, with a handshake for her father and a nod for her and her mother. "Daniel, Mary, Abigail; lovely to see you." The old priest was an amiable man, without a trace of the self-conscious piety too many men of the church liked to adopt.

"And you, father."

The priest focused on the fourth member of their group, and smiled even wider. "Ah, Jed! I didn't know you knew the Barringtons."

"Uh, yes father, we just met."

"And I'm sure you'll get on famously," he agreed. He laid a fond hand on Jed's shoulder. "We have high hopes for young Jed here, you know. He's going to make a fine, fine man of the cloth some day."

Under the suddenly startled collective gaze of three sets of eyes, Jed smiled awkwardly, and looked down at the ground. "I'll do my best, father," he said, quietly but seriously.

The funny feeling in her stomach, Abbey told herself later during the service, had simply been the swift kick of surprise.

* * *

"So... you're really going to be a priest?" Abbey tilted her head on one side to regard him, but he thought there was more honest curiosity there than the usual disbelief.

"Yeah." Jed slipped his hands into his pockets, moving his feet awkwardly. It was always weird, when people first found out you were going to be a priest. They didn't know how to take it.

"Oh." She was silent for a moment. "So, I guess..." she began tentatively "...I'll probably see you at the bookstore sometime?"

"Yeah... probably. I guess."

"Okay."

"Okay." He didn't know why he was grinning like an idiot. But she was smiling back, so he guessed it didn't matter. After a moment, she pointed towards her parents' car.

"I should-"

"Yeah."

"Okay... bye."

"Bye."

He watched her walk back to the car. Just before she reached it, she turned back to give him a quick wave and a grin.

He walked home with the stupid smile pasted to his face.

* * *

"Jed!" He was caught off-guard by the roar from his roommates that greeted his arrival.

"Where did you _go_ last night, man?"

"Where did you _sleep_?"

"We've been calling all the hospitals, we thought you'd been _killed_ or something!"

"Sorry! I just- I didn't-" Jed shrugged in helpless apology. He'd completely forgotten his roommates might be worrying about him - truth to tell, it had never occurred to him that they might notice he was missing.

It never failed to amaze him how quickly they could cease to worry about things.

"Hey, no big deal, buddy," Jason said, patting him absently on the head. "We're just not used to our little trainee priestlet going wandering."

"Where did you stay, man?" Andy asked him.

"Oh, I, um, I met this girl- No!" he shouted quickly, face flaming, as their eyebrows shot up in unison. "She, she, uh, she gave me a ride because of the storm, but it got too bad to come back into town so her parents let me stay at their house for the night."

His roommates refused to be put off by of such minor inconveniences as the truth. "Oh, she gave you a _ride_ did she?" Andy smirked, waggling his eyebrows.

Jed narrowed his eyes. "Shut up, Andy."

"Ooh, think you hit a nerve there, And. Was she pretty?" Jason asked. Jed shook his head in disgust at the pair of them, and walked through into the kitchen.

He poured himself a glass of water, and smiled at his reflection in the window there for a few moments.

Yup, she was pretty, all right.


	6. VI

** VI **

Jed sighed heavily, and grimaced down at his books. When had theology become so _complicated_?

Somewhere along the line, his subject of choice had become a spider's web. The more he tried to push on through to conclusions, the more tangled up he became. Even the things that a few weeks ago had seemed certain to him were now far less simple to wrap his head around.

This wasn't the way it was supposed to work. You broke a question down, and fitted the pieces back together until you had at least some part of an answer. You weren't supposed to break it down and find it fractured into a billion other questions, all of which grew until they were every bit as complicated as the first.

He was sure this wasn't what he was supposed to be doing. Examining his faith was supposed to help him understand it, not shake it around until he couldn't be sure of its foundations anymore.

He believed in God. He wanted to serve God. Jed probed those basic building blocks cautiously, and was relieved when they still held firm. But everything else was so confused... how long until the very centre of his faith gave way?

The priesthood had been the unspoken assumption ever since school, through his first year of college; the decision that was so simple it didn't need to be decided. Now... now he wasn't sure that he could be a priest, he wasn't sure that he _wanted_ to be, and worse, he really didn't know what he could hope to be if he wasn't.

Jed was becoming increasingly uncertain of who he was. He'd thought all along that he'd been destined for the church, but if he was wrong... well then, who was the stranger left wearing the face of that imaginary man, the man he'd always thought he was?

He needed a smoke.

The thought startled him a little. He didn't smoke at college, he hadn't done all last year. Smoking was for home, when life with his father became close to unbearable. Smoking was rebellion. What did he have to rebel against here?

Still, maybe it would help. He would go outside, walk down to buy some cigarettes, clear his head a little.

If there was one thing he needed right now, it was a clearer head. He grabbed his jacket from the back of the chair and headed for the door.

* * *

"So I'll see you later, then?"

"Sure." Abbey stood on tiptoes to plant a brief kiss on Ron, and he smiled fondly at her.

"Want me to walk you home?"

"No, I'm okay. I was thinking I might walk down to the bookstore, actually."

Ron rolled his eyes theatrically. "Not _more_ medical books?"

"Hey, I have to learn somehow," she shrugged.

"Some of us wait until we, you know, actually start college."

"Well, that's because you're slow," she teased.

He grinned, and gave her a squeeze before lightly kissing her forehead. "Call me?"

"I will," she promised.

Abbey watched him go, and sighed. She'd had a perfectly pleasant date with Ron, but... Well, there wasn't really a but. There wasn't really an anything. She'd just been sitting, making stupid, nothing conversation with Ron, and... And she couldn't help thinking about her conversation with Jed the other night, and how she never talked with Ron like that.

Which was totally not fair. Because Ron was her boyfriend and sweet and adorable and he'd just bought her lunch, and of course he wasn't as interested in talking about dreams and big thinking and all that kind of deep stuff as somebody who was going to be a priest.

A priest. That was still a bit of a 'whoa' thought. How could somebody who was only a few years older than her already be so certain that they were ready to dedicate their entire life to that kind of selfless service?

She hadn't told Ron about meeting Jed. She knew he'd only fuss about her offering him a ride, just like her parents had. And it seemed more than a little unfair to go on and on about how she'd only just met this guy but he really understood her, really connected to what she was talking about. Ron always tried so hard to take an interest in all the things she cared about.

Abbey wandered down to the bookshop, but when she went in Jed wasn't at the counter. She poked around and looked at books for a few minutes, then finally decided she was being an idiot. She went up to the young man serving. "Uh, excuse me?"

"Hi, how can I help you, miss?" he said cheerfully.

"Oh, I was just, um, I was just wondering, is Jed here?"

"Jed?" He smiled at her. "No, he's not working today. You're a friend of his?"

"Sort of. A bit. We go to the same church," she explained, feeling a stab of disappointment.

"Ah." He grinned. "Did he ever tell you what the Jed's short for?"

"No...?" she said curiously.

He leaned in, and winked. "Stands for Jethro," he told her authoritatively.

She doubted that very much, but she had to grin anyway. "Okay."

"Yeah. Want me to tell him you stopped by when I see him next?"

"No, that's okay." After all, it was no big deal. She'd just said she'd maybe call by sometime.

"Okay," he shrugged.

"Thanks." She headed out of the door of the store, and almost walked straight into Jed.

* * *

He felt his face split into a huge smile. "Abbey! Hey."

She grinned back, and then tilted her head to regard him curiously. "You're smoking?"

Jed looked down at the cigarette in his hand as if he'd only just noticed it.

"I do that sometimes," he admitted.

"Not very priestly of you, Jethro."

He frowned. "Jeth- Oh, God, you haven't been speaking to that idiot in there, have you?"

She laughed, a delightful trickle of a sound that made his spine tingle. "Is that your name?"

"No, it's not," he scowled.

"Well, it's not just Jed, is it?"

"It's definitely not Jethro." They were walking along side by side now, although he had no idea where they were going.

"So what's it short for?"

"What do you care?" he asked with a smile.

Abbey shrugged, pretending to be offended. "Fine, I'll just call you Jethro, then."

"It's not actually short for anything," he admitted. "It's just what my parents started calling me." He sat down on a nearby low wall and took a puff on his cigarette; she sat down beside him, resting her elbows on her knees.

"So what's your real name then, Jethro?"

He gave her a look, and then flicked his gaze away, embarrassed. "Josiah," he admitted quietly.

To his surprise, she didn't laugh. "Josiah Bartlett?" she said, frowning for a moment over the familiarity of the name. "Like on the Declaration of Independence?"

He looked up at her, surprised. "I'm one of his descendants," he admitted. "Only without the second T on Bartlet."

"What happened to it?"

Jed laughed and shook his head. "I don't know," he shrugged.

"Huh," she snorted. "Call yourself a history buff?"

He gave her a look. "I never said that."

"Yeah, but I can tell."

He laughed. "Busted," he admitted, and took another puff of his cigarette.

"So what are you doing out here, Josiah Jethro Bartlet without the second T who wants to be a priest?"

He smiled at her. "I don't know," he admitted. He almost told her he wasn't so sure he still wanted to be a priest, but he didn't. "Why are you here?"

Abbey smiled, and shrugged. "I don't know, either."

"Well, I guess we're a couple of losers, wandering the streets on our own."

"Yeah. You think we wouldn't be such losers if we wandered the streets together?"

"Well, I guess it couldn't hurt." He looked across at her, and they shared a quick smile.


	7. VII

** VII **

"Morning, Ben."

"Hey, Abbey." Ben gave the diminutive girl a smile. He'd taken pretty quickly to Jed's church friend; just as well, since she'd been hanging round the bookstore a lot, lately.

"Jed here yet?" she asked, perching on the edge of the counter.

"On time?" Ben laughed incredulously. His fellow store assistant might have many virtues, but punctuality wasn't one of them. He straightened books on the shelf. "So how's things with you and Ron?"

"Oh, he's away at the moment," she said, pulling a face.

"Scared him off, did you?"

"Shut up," she smiled. "No, he's taking a long break for Christmas; he won't be back 'til January. But he calls nearly every day. He's a great boyfriend."

"He sounds like it," Ben agreed. But privately, he also thought it sounded like Abbey told herself that rather a lot; as if she wanted to believe it, but she knew there was something that wasn't quite right.

From the way she and Jed lit up in each other's presence, he rather suspected he knew what. He could see there was a spark there, when they talked about nothing for hours and argued about everything under the sun... but Jed was going to be a priest, so who knew _where_ that was going? Probably somewhere awkward. Still, it wasn't his place to wade into the middle of it.

Jed charged through the doors in his usual disarray. "What time d'you call this?" Ben and Abbey asked in unison, and they shared a grin.

Jed, for once, didn't grin back, just shook his head and rubbed his forehead tiredly. "Yeah, I'm sorry, I was up most of the night with my assignment, and then I stopped on the way to pick up my mail."

"Hey, that's okay, man," Ben shrugged. He exchanged a concerned look with Abbey. Jed didn't look good. If it had been anybody else, he'd have written it off as nothing more than a hangover, but he knew Jed didn't drink. He was really running himself ragged with his college work; even though he was predictably late to every single morning shift, Ben didn't think he was getting nearly enough sleep.

"Are you all right, Jed?" Abbey asked gently. He mustered a smile for her that still shone brightly through his battered demeanour.

"Yeah, I just..." He sighed and sat down. "I don't know." He pulled a couple of crumpled letters out of his pocket and turned them over reflectively.

"Anything interesting?" Abbey inquired.

"Letter from home." He placed it on the counter in front of him and frowned down at it.

"Aren't you going to open it?" she chided gently.

"Not if I had a choice," he said, but he reached out and tiredly slitted it open with a finger. Ben noticed the way his face tightened as he read it. At the end, he slammed it down on the desk and tilted his head back, rubbing his neck as if he had an ache there.

"Bad news?" Abbey asked concernedly.

"Yeah." He smiled without humour. "My dad wants me to come home for Christmas."

"You don't want to go?"

"Not much, no." He slipped down off the tabletop and shook his head at himself. "I'm surprised he even remembered I'm out here. He probably wants to ask me when I'm going to give up on theology and get a _real_ degree."

Ben was startled by the depth of the bitterness, and how much of it seemed to be self-directed. Jed was angry at himself for something, although it was hard to guess what. He'd gradually come to realise that his coworker kept a lot more of himself under the surface than the amiably klutzy trivia freak he showed the outside world. Something was wrong, and had been wrong for a while, but Jed wasn't prepared to share it with anyone.

Abbey could see it too. "Are you sure you're okay?" she asked quietly. She lightly touched his hand, and Jed's head shot up to lock gazes with her.

"I'm fine," he said with a slight smile. The physical contact had lasted only an instant, but Ben fancied he could see the crackle of electricity linger in the air between them.

Oh, no, there was no way this was ending well.

* * *

"Hey, darling."

"Hey, Ron." Abbey smiled into the phone. "How's life up there with the Ehrlichs?"

She could picture him rolling his eyes. "It's okay. Mom's trying to drag me off Christmas shopping for the boys already."

"You can never start too early," she chided. She hadn't even thought about a present for Ron... God, what could she buy him? Her mind was a complete blank. "So... what do you want Santa to bring you this Christmas?" she asked playfully, making a joke of it.

"You," he said simply.

The sincerity in his voice threw her for a moment, and she quickly deflected it with a quip. "Honey, there ain't no way you're unwrapping me for Christmas."

He laughed. "No, okay," he agreed reluctantly. "But I miss you. I've been thinking about you this whole time."

"Yeah." Abbey felt horribly aware that maybe she hadn't been thinking of Ron quite so much as he'd been thinking of her. It was just that she'd been so _busy_, and she was always with her parents or her school friends or with Jed, and...

Wasn't Ron supposed to be the main thing on her mind, though? So why couldn't she even think of what to buy him for a Christmas present?

"So what've you been doing down there?" he asked curiously. "Did you miss me? Are you lonely? Did our team win the football?"

Abbey laughed and shook her head over the stream of questions. "Okay, in order? Stuff, of course, maybe a little bit, and like I'd actually know that?"

Ron picked out the middle question immediately. "You're lonely?" he asked worriedly. "You want me to come back? Because I could try and get my parents to-"

"No, Ron!" she objected, rolling her eyes. "I'm fine! It's just, you know... you're out there, one of my friends is going off to New Hampshire... I feel like I'm gonna be the only one left here come Christmas-time."

"Well, okay." He still sounded a little bothered. "If you're sure you don't need me to-"

"I _will_ be fine. Really. Besides," she smiled, "it means I've got your calls to look forward to." Ron had been calling her every day, sometimes twice a day. It made her feel very warm and fuzzy every time he called, although sometimes she found it a little hard to find anything to fill their conversations with.

"I'm not annoying your parents, am I?" he worried.

"Trust me, it takes more than being an attentive boyfriend to annoy my parents," she said dryly.

"Okay. Well... I gotta go. Mom's gonna want the phone in a minute. I'll call you tomorrow?"

"Sure. Bye."

"I'm counting off the days to January," he assured her.

"Me too."

"I miss you. Bye." He blew a kiss into the phone, and put it down. Abbey regarded her own receiver for a moment, and sighed.

Ron was so hung up on her - sometimes she felt like she was leading him on. Which was stupid, because she was his girlfriend. A serious girlfriend. And that was what she wanted to be.

It was probably just because they were both still young. As much as she liked to tell her parents she was an adult now, she was really still only just growing out of being a kid. Of course it wasn't like things with Ron were going to click instantly and just be perfect, just like that. They had to grow together; they had to work at being the girlfriend and boyfriend they wanted to be.

And she _did_ want that. After all, she liked Ron; Ron was great. She liked Ron plenty.

It was just that there was a little voice in the back of her head that kept asking if she really liked him _enough_.

* * *

A flurry of horn-blasts greeted him at the train station. Jed wasn't sure whether to smile or scowl as he saw his younger brother waving furiously.

"When did you get your licence?" he demanded as he heaved his case into the back of the car.

"Last month," Johnny grinned. Jed was careful to buckle his seatbelt, and grip hold of the sides of the seat tightly.

"So how's the exciting life of a theology major?" his brother asked as they drove.

Jed shrugged. "It's okay." Jonathan Bartlet was not somebody he could easily share his confused excuse for a crisis of faith with. The only person he thought he could have talked to was Mrs. Landingham, and she didn't work at the school anymore. He wrote to her quite a lot, but when it came to trying to explain what was so wrong... he just couldn't make it come out right on the written page. Hell, he couldn't even make it come out right in his own head.

"Managed to get laid yet?" Johnny asked with a smirk.

Jed gave him a scathing look. "I'm going to be a _priest_," he reminded him.

"Ah, it's only 'cause none of the girls want to know you," he jibed.

"Shut up," Jed groaned, rubbing his forehead. Surprisingly, Johnny did, and after a few moments he looked over at his older brother.

"Did you talk to dad at all?"

"No. I wasn't even gonna come back until he asked me to." He shrugged. "I honestly don't know why he did."

Jonathan hesitated. "He got a call from the college," he revealed.

"He got _what_?" Jed grabbed him by the arm.

"Jed! Driving a car here!" He yanked his hand away.

"He got a call from the college?"

"Yeah." Jonathan slipped down into a lower gear as he gave his brother a searching look. "Are you in some kind of trouble?"

"No." Jed shook his head. "No, I just... I don't know." He buried his face in his hands and sighed. They'd called his father. Probably to find out if there was some family circumstance he wasn't telling them about, some _reason_ why his grades were slipping, why those perfect test scores were eluding him.

They'd called his father. Oh, hell.

"Come on, Jed, you _never_ get in school trouble," Jonathan said worriedly. "What's going on?"

He hesitated, and then finally admitted it out loud. "I think I might be dropping out."

Johnny slammed the brakes on. The car screeched to a stop, and his little brother stared at him. "You? Dropping out? Of _college_?"

"Of theology. Or- Jesus, I don't know." He slammed the belt release and got out of the car, walking out into the New Hampshire weather. He sat on the grass by the side of the road, arms wrapped around his knees, and looked up at the stars. After a moment, the lights on the car went out, and Jonathan came out to join him.

"You don't wanna be a priest anymore, huh?" he asked after a moment.

Jed shrugged aggressively, and lowered his head. His eyes burned, but he wasn't going to cry in front of his little brother. He wasn't going to cry, period. If his father had never made him, nothing else was ever going to.

Jonathan let out a brief huff of air, and was silent for a moment. Jed continued to look at the ground.

"We should be getting back," Johnny said finally.

"Yeah," Jed agreed, voice muffled against his arms.

"You want me to-?"

Jed looked up at him. "What can you do?" he said resignedly.

Johnny could only shrug apologetically. He might be a man grown now, broad across the shoulders and big enough to be a football player, but he was still Jed's little brother, and there'd never been any standing between Jed and his father.

After a moment they both got up, and walked back to the car.


	8. VIII

** VIII **

It was funny... he never really felt small, anywhere but here. Oh, he knew nearly all the other guys he met were taller; but that was just it, they were taller, and he was just him.

But here, he always felt small. In fact, as he walked through the familiar hallway, he could almost feel himself shrinking.

Jonathan hadn't come into the house with him; Jed didn't blame him. But it would be better without his brother by his side. Maybe. Better, worse, all the same. It didn't matter what he did, how the situation changed; the end result was always the same.

Echoes of a younger boy dogged his footsteps; echoes of the Jed Bartlet he once had been, the one he thought he'd left behind, but would always be waiting here in this house for him.

The one who lived with daddy.

The front hall was a space and time warp of massive proportions. Always the longest walk of his life.

Never long enough.

"Jed."

His father never smiled when he saw him. Never.

"Sir."

He'd lied, once, to Mrs. Landingham, when she'd asked him why he called his father 'sir'. It wasn't because he was headmaster. He'd always called his father 'sir'. He used the word 'dad' sometimes, when he dared, but it never made any difference. Nothing ever made any difference.

Jed thought perhaps that after a while, Mrs. Landingham had come to understand what was going on with him and his father a whole lot better than at first. But he'd never come out and spoken about it, and she'd never broken that wall down and asked. Some days, he wished she had. Most days, he was glad she hadn't.

He wished she still lived in New Hampshire.

His father, as usual, had no time for anything but cold business. "I received a telephone call from Dr. Watkins at the University of Notre Dame." Watkins. Dammit. It had to be Dr. Watkins, didn't it, affable old Dr. Watkins to whom it would never occur that a boy's father might be anything but supportive and concerned if his son was struggling at school. "Your grades are failing, Josiah, what do you have to say for yourself?"

Ah, yes, failing. Because a percentage dip from the upper nineties to the lower eighties was failing. Because anything less than perfect was failing. And perfect wasn't good enough.

"I'm not failing the course, father-"

The slap was a violent sting across his cheek, unexpected and expected all at once.

"Don't contradict me, boy."

Jed wished he had a nature that could obey that command. He wished he knew how to bow his head and just be silent until the punishment was over. But there was something in him that had to speak out, that kept him speaking out no matter what happened, no matter how much worse he knew he was making it.

"Father, I slipped some points, but I-"

"You're slacking off. You think you're _so_ clever, you think you can _cruise_ through your lessons and do what you want. I didn't send you to college so you can slack off and fail classes!"

_You didn't send me to college. Mom sent me to college. Mom set up that fund and she made sure you couldn't take it away from me, you couldn't make me beg for it._

His face burned, but he couldn't make the argument, he couldn't _begin_ to explain his doubts and his fears and confusion to this man who cared for nothing but mythical measures of success that he couldn't obtain. Jed looked at the ground. "I'm sorry, sir. It won't happen again."

His father's cold expression didn't change. "Your 'sorry' doesn't impress me."

_Of course it doesn't. Does anything?_

Even now, now when he thought he was old enough to know better, there was a part of him still searching for that key. Something that would get... _Not bad. That'll do. That's okay. Reasonable. Didn't do too bad there, son._

A bitter smile lurked at the edges of his mouth, but he knew better than to let it show.

_You think you're funny, do you? You think you're_ so _clever._

"Your grades _will_ improve when you return to college," his father said shortly. "I let you apply for this mockery of a course - I won't let you embarrass me by failing it."

This was the point where he straightened up, looked his father in the eye, and said "I'm an adult. I don't have to take this from you anymore. I'm not frightened of you. I'm in charge of my own life." And then turned on his heel and walked out, never to return.

Jed lowered his head.

"Yes, sir."

* * *

"Is she still up there?" Mary looked across at her husband.

Daniel nodded gravely. "She seems to have been in this morose mood for days."

"It's not like her," Mary observed worriedly.

"It would appear to be typical teenage brooding behaviour."

"That's what I mean when I say that it's not like her."

He smiled in wry agreement. "Has she said anything about what's wrong?"

"No, but I can guess."

"Feeling a little deserted." Daniel nodded to himself, then looked up at her sharply. "But by the boyfriend, or the friend?"

Now there was the question. Mary hadn't missed the spark of connection between Abbey and the delightfully polite future priest she'd brought into their lives one evening. Though she hated to say it, she predicted that spark enduring a lot longer than Abbey's relationship with Ron.

The trouble was, she could see that there was more behind that little spark than an acceptably platonic relationship with a future man of the cloth would quite cover. So the question became; was it purely teenage hormones working their usual chemistry experiments, or was there something more to it?

That, she couldn't tell; and she was willing to bet Abigail, freshly eighteen years old and right in the middle of it, was having an even more confusing time of it.

She ascended the stairs and knocked softly on her daughter's bedroom door. "Abbey?"

"Come in, mom."

Her voice sounded subdued. When Mary went in, she was lying on her stomach on the bed, legs kicked up behind her as she flipped through yet another medical book. She was a lot like her father in that respect; decide on a goal, and it was full speed ahead, pouring everything she had into getting what she wanted.

And, like her father, she probably wasn't at all used to being in a mixed up place where she didn't know _what_ she wanted.

"How are you doing, honey?" she asked gently, sitting down on the edge of the bed. Abbey twisted around to look up at her, mildly surprised.

"I'm fine, mom."

"You seem a little down."

"It's just..." Abbey shrugged, and then sighed. "I'm kinda worried about Jed," she admitted, fiddling with the corners of the pages.

"Worried? Is something wrong?"

"I don't know," she said helplessly. "I told you he went back to New Hampshire... he got a letter from his dad, and he didn't... I don't think he wanted to go." She bit her lip, obviously miserable at the idea of him being miserable.

Mary felt a thread of concern tug at her own heart as well. He was such a sweet boy... He still called her "Mrs. Barrington, ma'am," every time they saw him in church.

"Why don't you write him a letter?" she suggested mildly. "I'm sure he'd love to hear from you."

Abbey pulled a frustrated face. "I don't know where he lives."

"Well, Ben at the bookstore might know, or he might be able to find out from one of Jed's roommates," she pointed out. "He knows you two are friends, I'm sure he won't mind giving you the address."

Abbey's face lit up at the idea. "Thanks, mom. Yeah, thanks, I might do that, actually."

"I'm sure Jed would love to get a letter from you." Mary smiled back at her daughter, pleased to see her in a brighter mood.

But as she left, she couldn't help worrying that her daughter's growing attachment to Jed Bartlet was going to end in tears for one or both of them.


	9. IX

** IX **

Jonathan absently flicked through the mail with one hand as he slurped a glass of juice from the other. Dad, dad, junk mail, dad... hey, that was a new one. "Jed!" he yelled into the next room. "You got a letter!"

Jed came through with a surprised frown. "For me?"

"Yeah," Johnny shrugged, holding it out to him without looking. "Don't recognise the writing."

He took it, and frowned. "Me neither." He reached across the table for the butter knife and slitted it open.

"Hey! That's for my breakfast, not your letter-opening, buddy."

Jed shrugged disinterestedly, and started to read the letter. He broke into a smile, and dropped into the nearest chair to continue reading. Jonathan watched with growing fascination as the smile spread; Jed had been miserable through the whole holiday, hardly a surprise when you considered what he'd revealed on his first day back. Dad had declared, in typical "Spare me the details" fashion, that Jed was going to go back to college and do better, and that was all there was to it. His brother hadn't admitted that he was actually thinking of dropping out, and Jonathan wasn't about to spill it. He and Jed fought all the time and over everything, but there were lines he would never, ever cross.

It was bitterly ironic, really; Jonathan suspected that he hated their father far more than Jed would ever bring himself to. He hated being the favoured son, hated that it was always Jed his father had to take down, hated that he could never truly bridge the gap between the two of them because of that distinction. He knew Jed was never anything but glad that his father's wrath landed only on his own shoulders... But Johnny hated it.

It was almost as if by sparing him, his father made him an accomplice. He'd rather be a victim than a bystander; the witness who saw it all, but did nothing to stop it. There was nothing he could do to stop it, and no way to ever bury the memory of too many nights with the covers drawn over his head, trying to block out the shouts - and worse - from the next room.

But now... Jed was smiling. Not the bitter smile, either, or the sad one, or even the one that passed for cheerful if you didn't look too closely. The real one. He hadn't seen his brother look that honestly delighted since before their mother had died.

He waited impatiently for his brother to get to the end of the letter. "Well?" he demanded. "Who's it from?"

Jed looked up, as if he'd almost forgotten he was alone in the room. "My friend Abbey," he said, and there was a strange, almost awed tone in his voice when he said the name.

"Abbey?" He narrowed his eyes. "Now that's a funny name for a boy."

Jed gave him a look. "That's because she's not."

Jonathan laughed aloud. "You know a _girl_?" he sniggered.

"I know lots of people," Jed shrugged defensively.

"But a girl. _Abbey_..." he mimicked and exaggerated his brother's wondering tone.

"Shut up." Jed glared balefully, and Jonathan leapt to his feet, grinning.

"Let me see that." He grabbed for the letter.

"Hey! Hey." Jed yanked it away from him, and folded it hurriedly to thrust it safely away in a pocket. Jonathan smirked in equal parts amusement and disbelief.

"Oh my _God_, you've got a _girlfriend_!"

"I do not!"

"You've got a _girlfriend_!"

"Johnny!" he yelled, going red in the face with embarrassed frustration.

Oh, this was just too good to be true. "Jed's in _lo-oove_," he sang out delightedly.

"Shut _up_, Johnny."

"You are. You so are. Admit it. You're in love with this Abbey girl."

Jed folded his arms. "I'm not," he insisted, pouting.

"You _are_! And she wrote you a letter. That's so cute!"

"Johnny! I-" Jed broke off, abruptly, and a shadow of something like fear passed momentarily over his face. Stomach suddenly lurching, Jonathan turned to see his father in the doorway.

He spared not so much as a glance for his younger son. "Jed," he said, and Johnny shivered at the coldness in that single syllable.

Jed slowly straightened up. "Sir, I-"

"In the study," his father said firmly.

Jed stood and just breathed for a short moment, and then he walked past Johnny and his father and out towards the study. The door closed as his father followed him, and Johnny stared at it for a moment, feeling sick.

Half of his breakfast was still untouched, but he suddenly had no stomach for it. He scraped it into the trash out in the kitchen, and ran the plate and glass under the water mechanically, staring out of the window without actually looking.

On his way to the bedroom he shared with Jed during the holidays, he had to pass the study. The murmur of voices was low enough that he couldn't make out the words, but he quickened his step as he passed in anyway.

Back in his room he lay stiffly on the bed, eyes fixed on the ceiling.

When things started to get noisy, he turned over and pulled the pillow over his head.

* * *

Jed moved with cautious slowness. For the moment, his back felt blessedly numb, but he knew it couldn't last for nearly long enough. It was going to be a blaze of white-hot agony come nightfall.

Johnny didn't look at him as he headed back into the bedroom. He lowered himself slowly onto the bed, trying not to wince and not quite succeeding. He raised his hands very gradually to lock them behind the back of his neck.

The small of his back was starting to throb already. He pretended it wasn't. He closed his eyes against the blurry haze of colours that warned he'd edged too close to passing out.

He wasn't used to this, anymore. In fact, he'd been foolish enough to believe that maybe he'd left it behind. But no, why should he have? What did it matter that he was a man now? That didn't really mean anything.

Jed didn't bother to chase thoughts of injustice through his head. It had made him angry, to hear his father reinvent the world as if Abbey was some kind of evil tramp and temptress, luring him away from his studies to embarrass his father. But he'd known for a long time that it wasn't really anything to do with what he did... just what he was.

He was himself. And that was what his father hated.

He heard the springs on the other bed as Johnny shifted position. He wanted to speak, Jed recognised it in the tenor of the silence, but as usual he said nothing. After a few moments, Jed heard him sigh softly to himself.

This was a familiar silence, but not a comfortable one. Too many school days, when he'd defied his father's word or talked too long and too loud about things his father didn't want to hear from him. Too many nights at the dinner table, when he could feel his mother and his brother tense to either side of him, but he still just couldn't stay silent.

Maybe it would have been better if he'd learned to stop himself from speaking out.

And maybe it wouldn't have made any difference at all.

It was becoming too uncomfortable to lie still. He pulled his knees up and squirmed up into a sitting position. Johnny looked across at him, and then quickly looked away. And Jed wanted to say something to him, but he never had before, so he didn't know how to start now.

He watched the dust motes move in the stream of soft sunlight from the window by his head. The air was cold; it would probably snow later. He remembered the winter when he was nine, when the roads had all been too icy for anyone to drive, and he and his father had walked all the way into town together while mom stayed at home with Johnny. They'd just walked, and neither of them had said anything, and when they'd got to the point across the fields where his legs were no match for the depth of the snow there, his father had picked him up and carried him.

Later, there had been the point when he'd amused all the people in the store with words that were too big for a nine-year-old, and the punishment that had come after... But it was the walk he always remembered.

Jonathan shifted again, and then got up in a hasty twang of springs and padded across the floor. He hesitated in the doorway, and Jed met his eyes.

Johnny opened his mouth to speak, stopped himself, and looked at the floor for the moment.

"It was a nice letter, huh?" he asked, finally. It hadn't been what he was going to say.

Jed allowed himself to smile softly. "Yeah."

Johnny's fingers wandered absently up and down the doorframe as he lingered. He pointedly vaguely out of the doorway. "I'm gonna go-"

"Yeah."

"Is she really your girlfriend?" he suddenly asked.

He shook his head slowly. "No."

Johnny nodded to himself for a few moments. "Okay."

Jed lowered himself back down onto the bed as his brother left. He thought again of Abbey's letter, and a small smile crossed his features.

_But I wish she was,_ he whispered, in the confines of his own head.


	10. X

** X **

There was a small thread of nervous anticipation coiled in her belly that she tried to ignore as she waited in the train station. After all, what did she have to be nervous about? Pleased, yes, maybe even excited, but nervous?

The platform was decidedly cold in the January weather. She stamped, and pressed her hands deeper into the folds of her coat. This had seemed like such a good idea earlier. Of course, it would have helped if she'd known exactly which train he was coming in on.

It had to be this one. Abbey tried to peer in the windows as it groaned to a stop, although from her vantage point it was all but impossible.

Finally the train came to a halt, and a solitary door creaked open. She waved madly. "Jed!"

"Abbey!" He dropped both his suitcases and beamed at her in surprise.

She ran towards him and then pulled up awkwardly a few feet away, second-guessing her first instinct to hug him. He didn't seem to notice her confusion, grinning at her in bemused delight.

"What are you doing out here, Abbey?"

"You told me you were getting back today," she reminded him.

"I didn't tell you what time I was coming in! How long have you been out here? You must be frozen." He grabbed for her hand to feel the temperature, and she suddenly felt very self-conscious.

"Oh, like it was any warmer on the train?" she demanded, disentangling her hand. She looked away, and her eyes fell on the small station café. "We should both get coffee or something."

"Yeah," he agreed, sounding oddly breathless. He reached down for his suitcases, and Abbey saw him wince.

"What's wrong?" she demanded, concerned.

He shook his head. "Oh, I-" He looked embarrassed. "I was climbing over this pile of logs? And I... kind of slipped and... bruised up all my back." He pulled a face at his own klutzyness.

"And you think you're okay with carrying heavy luggage? Jackass." She grabbed one of the suitcases, and he shook his head at her.

"Are you ever gonna stop managing me?" he wondered.

"Are you ever going to learn to manage yourself?"

Instead of quipping back, he just gave her a soft smile that made her stomach melt. "I missed you."

"I missed you too." She quickly looked down at the ground, suddenly inexplicably shy.

There was a silence that lingered on for a beat too long.

"Let's go get that coffee," Jed said abruptly.

"Yeah," she agreed quickly.

* * *

Ron knocked rapidly on the front door, itchy with excitement at the prospect of seeing Abbey again. It was opened by her mother.

"Hey there, Mrs. Barrington," he smiled. "Is Abbey home?"

"Hello there, Ron," she said warmly. "I thought you didn't get back until Tuesday?"

"I convinced my mom to let me come back a few days early," he explained. "I wanted to surprise Abbey - is she here?"

"I'm afraid not," her mother said regretfully. "I think she's at the station right now."

"The train station? I hope she hasn't decided to leave the country," he joked.

"She's gone to meet a friend who's coming in from New Hampshire."

"Oh, yeah, she said," Ron remembered. "Okay. I'll see if I can meet her there. Thanks, Mrs. Barrington."

"No problem, Ron," she smiled kindly.

As he got back into his car, Ron tried to ignore the groundless feeling of anxiety that had been dogging him for few days now. If he was entirely truthful, it was more than just his desire to see Abbey that had prompted him to come back early.

It had been... strained, trying to keep their relationship going by phone. The longer they'd been in different states, the more the silences stretched out as they'd struggled to think of words to fill the gap. He was deathly afraid they were beginning to drift apart.

He adored Abbey, but somehow he'd always been... a little bit afraid. Not of her, but of how they sometimes seemed like they weren't quite on the same page, they were talking at cross-purposes.

He quashed the thought. They were dating, they didn't have to be able to read each other's minds or anything. They liked each other a whole lot, they wanted to be together... wasn't that enough?

_Wasn't_ that enough?

They were in love, right? Okay, they'd never actually come out and said as much, because Abbey didn't believe in saying that sort of thing lightly, and he respected that. But still, they _were_ in love.

Abbey would laugh, if she knew how paranoid he got sometimes about the two of them. Or maybe she wouldn't.

Sometimes he felt like he didn't really understand her at all, and that was the problem. There were so many things they didn't... they didn't _connect_ on. Like medical school... it was cool and all, that she knew so early exactly what she wanted to do with his life and how to get there, but sometimes he wished she'd want to... to be _young_, a bit more. To just party and have fun and not be thinking about the future all the time.

Abbey was a dreamer, and he lived in the here and now. But opposites attracted, right? And love conquered all. So it didn't matter that she made jokes he didn't get sometimes, or she couldn't always understand where he was coming from with his priorities, or they could be sitting talking sometimes and he would realise he had absolutely no idea what she was thinking about.

All these crazy doubts would be all right if he could just see her. They really would. Ron parked the car, and jogged quickly into the station.

With a stab of disappointment he saw that the platform was empty, but then he caught a flash of familiar long dark hair through the window of the station café. She'd stopped for a coffee or something with her friend.

He smiled to himself, thinking he could just step in, slip an arm round her and sit down beside her, like he'd never been away. Like he'd never spent any time wondering if their relationship was truly strong enough to last if they found so little to talk about.

Ron hesitated in the doorway, taken aback when he saw her talking animatedly with a young man who was gesturing emphatically with half a sandwich. A guy friend? She hadn't mentioned this was a guy friend.

He shook himself out of it, calling himself an idiot. Abbey made friends with everybody. So what if she was talking to a guy? She already had a boyfriend, and that was him. Abbey wasn't the type to step out on anybody. He went inside.

A wave of warm laughter greeted him, as Abbey leaned across the table towards the guy. "C'mon, seriously, how do you manage to _trip over your own pants_ in the middle of a church service?"

"Oh, you say that now, you're laughing _now_." The boy mock-glared at her. "If you'd been there-"

"I would be laughing even harder?"

"It really wasn't particularly amusing."

"I find that very hard to believe," Abbey said dryly.

"I'll have you know that I fell on my ass with gravitas and dignity," he said sternly.

"Not to mention your panther-like poise."

"That too."

They were both grinning at each other like crazy, and Ron felt his heart twist. He'd never been able to make Abbey laugh like that. She smiled at his dopey jokes, but he'd never managed to reduce her to a fit of helpless giggles. And she was gazing at that guy like he was-

He strode over to the table.

"Abbey?" He glared across at the guy. "Who the hell are you?"

They both shot to their feet.

"Ron-" Abbey began, obviously caught off guard. Later, he might acknowledge to himself that her startled reaction might be as much surprise as a guilty conscience, but right now he was feeling hurt and lost and angry.

"What's going on here?" he demanded.

The guy smiled at him. He might have been able to contain his bubbling frustration, but the guy _smiled_ at him. "Uh, hi. I'm Jed Bartlet, I-"

"What are you doing back here early, Ron?" Abbey asked, and in his frame of mind it was easy to believe she sounded defensive.

"Why?" he scowled. "Am I interrupting something?"

Abbey had never had the world's most restrained temper. Her face darkened. "Listen, Ron-"

"No. No, wait a minute," he said sharply. "I go away for Christmas, I come back and find you making time with some guy-"

"This is my friend Jed," Abbey shrugged, looking irritated.

"Your friend Jed? Since when did you get a friend Jed? I don't know anything about a Jed."

At that the boy glanced across at her, as if mildly puzzled by that news. The sick feeling in the pit of his stomach grew stronger. If this was nothing, if this was innocent, then why had she been _hiding_ this from him?

"Well, he's my friend," Abbey said, putting the emphasis on the last word. "We go to the same church."

"Yeah, and he's such a good friend you never mentioned his name to me, but all of a sudden you're meeting him at the station and stopping for drinks?" He stared at her. "What am I supposed to think, Abbey? Tell me, seriously, what am I supposed to think?"

If she'd been calm in her rebuttal, it might have cooled his suspicious temper, but Abigail Barrington was nothing if not a spitfire when under attack.

"Oh, please. There is _nothing_ going on here," she growled. "Which, if you would actually get your head out of your-"

"Hey, hey, hey." This 'Jed' guy held up his arms in a calming gesture that made Ron want to hit him. "Listen, just- This is all a big misunderstanding. I can understand it might look a little... Okay. I think we should all just take a moment, and-"

His 'understanding' was the last straw, and as he stepped forward placatingly, Ron shoved him back. "Am I talking to you?"

He struck the table behind him, and hissed in an expression of pain that was, in Ron's opinion, way out of proportion to the strength of the push. Even so, he was immediately struck by remorse. This guy was like a head shorter than him, and Ron wasn't a violent guy. Instinct had him actually moving to check if the guy was okay when Abbey pushed her way between them, eyes cold.

"I think you'd better _leave_, Ron," she said darkly. Tellingly, her tone had dropped from yelling to coolly even, and he knew he'd really blown it. He glanced for a moment at Jed, leaning against the table and wincing, and then looked back down to Abbey. "Just _go_," she said, before he could open his mouth.

He took a step back and hesitated. He almost tried to apologise, but then he didn't, and he turned and pushed his way out of the café. He broke into a run as he crossed the platform, and when he got back in his car he thumped a fist into the passenger seat, hard.

He drove away before the burning at the back of his eyes could turn into the frustrated tears it was threatening to.


	11. XI

** XI **

Jed flattened his hands against the table and tried hard to breathe without screaming. "I'm sorry, Abbey," he gasped out. "I didn't mean to get you in-"

"Oh, don't you start with this crap!" she snapped. "God, men! Get a clue, the lot of you!" She was trying to be angry, but he could see she was upset underneath it. He straightened up, with an effort.

Abbey's doctor's instinct took over.

"Are you okay? Did he hurt your back? Let me see."

He flinched away from her touch, as much out of guilt as from fear she might somehow see through his lie about how he'd hurt himself. She obviously thought her boyfriend was being a jealous idiot, but Jed was sure he was partly to blame. He'd finally admitted to himself that he was drawn to Abbey... what if Ron had recognised that in him, seen the way his interest wasn't as innocent as it should be?

He had no right to be thinking about her that way. So far as she was concerned, he was just her friend... more than that, he was her friend who was supposed to be becoming a _priest_, for God's sake. What the hell was he thinking?

Jed pulled away from her. "I've gotta, um-" He gestured vaguely towards the restroom, and staggered towards it as fast as the pain in his back would let him.

When he got inside, his legs practically collapsed from under him. The bruises from his father's beating stung with a new agony. He leaned against the wall and just breathed for a few minutes, then shakily made his way over to the washbasin and drank water from his cupped hands.

He hesitated, glancing towards the door, then he cautiously lifted the back of his sweatshirt and tried to crane over his shoulder to look at himself in the mirror.

The door swung open. Jed dropped his sweatshirt and spun around hurriedly. It was Abbey.

He gaped at her. "What the hell-?"

Ignoring his bemusement, she marched towards him with a determined expression on her face. "Okay, Jethro, turn around, take your shirt off, and let me see."

He continued to stare.

"Now!" she barked.

Suddenly slightly frightened, he turned around to rest his hands on the top of the washbasin. "I'm telling your dad you followed me into the men's room and ordered me to take my clothes off," he threatened nervously, as he tugged the sweatshirt over his head and held it defensively across his chest.

Abbey sucked in an appalled breath as she saw the bruised state of his lower back. "Oh, Jed..." she breathed. She cautiously reached out with her fingertips to touch his flesh, and it wasn't only pain that made his muscles go taut with tension.

The door swung open again. They both turned their heads, to see a student type hesitating in the doorway with an... interesting... expression on his face. Abbey jerked a peremptory thumb at him.

"Honey, this restroom has been commandeered by the medical division. Take a hike."

The man stared at them, and Abbey narrowed her eyes.

"Hey, you're a guy," she shrugged shortly. "Pee up a tree or something. Use the ladies', I don't care. Scram!"

He pulled his eyebrows up in an 'okaaaay' expression, and left. Jed looked across at Abbey. "Can I put my clothes back on now, please? Before anybody else walks in here?"

She gave him a look equal parts stern and concerned. "Jed... you are _really_ beaten up here."

"I'm okay." He shrugged the sweatshirt back on.

"Did you have a doctor look at this?"

"It's fine."

"Jed!" She glared, and then shook her head at him. "You're coming home with me. I'm gonna get my dad to look at you." She grabbed him by the arm and dragged him out.

"Abbey, I really don't need- Something the matter?" he asked a very startled couple seated just outside the restroom door.

"You're getting it looked at, Jed, and that's final," Abbey insisted. She walked back to their table and picked up both of his suitcases. "And don't even _think_ about trying to take one of these," she warned.

"Okay." He trailed after her, defeated.

* * *

The young man flinched even under his expert doctor's touch. The bruises on his back were extensive, and beginning to turn spectacularly colourful.

"You say you slipped on a pile of logs?" Daniel queried.

"Yes, sir." Jed nodded even though the doctor was behind him. "I was climbing over and I slid down and landed on my back."

"Mm." He walked around the boy and tilted his chin up to look him in the eye. "Jed... does your father hit you a lot?"

"Sir, I-" Jed pulled back instinctively, but Daniel had already seen the answer in his face.

"Jed." He let the silence weigh heavily for a beat. "My daughter may have believed you, if nothing else because you have an honest face, but I've been a doctor for a long long time, and I know a beating when I see one. And if it had been anybody else but your father you would already have said so, so don't disrespect my intelligence by lying to me now."

He looked down at the study floor, and said nothing; as close as Daniel knew he would get to an admission. He sat down on the edge of the desk to be at a better eye level with the boy. "You want to tell me what this was about?" he asked gently.

Jed shook his head mutely, suddenly reduced to the figure of a much younger boy. Daniel's heart bled at the sight of him.

"Okay," he said softly. He reached out, careful of his injured back, and pulled the boy against him. Jed just seemed to stand there stiffly for a moment, as if confused by the gesture, then he slowly twisted around in his arms to accept the embrace. Daniel stroked his hair. "Okay, son. It's okay."

* * *

Jed lay face down on Matthew Barrington's bed. He supposed it was just as well Abbey's brother hadn't stayed home for the whole Christmas period. Despite his token protests over the Barringtons' hospitality, he really hadn't wanted to face the thought of going back to the house and his boisterous roomies.

He felt at once both sleepy and agitated, uncomfortable with the idea that Dr. Barrington knew about his father. It had the itch of a secret that should never have been revealed, a dark place that was best left covered up.

Yet, at the same time, there was an odd feeling of relief. Like the hollow but somehow reassuring feeling after you'd thrown up until you couldn't do it anymore. Like there it was, all done with, and you were still alive.

He wasn't sure what reaction he'd expected. Not _expected_, because well, that fear that somebody would turn around and tell him that his father was right, that maybe he deserved it, that maybe he did have a smart mouth and he did provoke his father all the time... that had never really been real, had it? He'd never really believed it.

Didn't really believe it.

Not really.

It had been... strange, to be hugged. Not unwelcome, just... strange. His mother had hugged him from time to time, but he always associated that with her eyes red from crying, and the slam of the front door when his father stormed out. His father rarely touched him at all, when it wasn't to use his fists.

At least Abbey didn't know. Jed was sure, from the sympathetic kiss Mrs. Barrington had placed briefly on his forehead, that Dr. Barrington had told his wife the truth, but Jed had specifically asked that he not tell Abbey. He didn't want her to see him through that distorted filter of pity. He didn't want her to see him as the poor beaten child; that wasn't him. He was more than that. He didn't want her to just feel sorry for him.

Thinking of Abbey; he knew it was her in the doorway behind him without turning. He liked to imagine that it was some special extra sense, although it was probably just the lightness of her tread.

"Hey."

"Hey." He offered her a wan smile as she came over to kneel beside him.

"How're you feeling?" she asked gently.

"Would you believe me if I said I was fine?"

"Not even slightly."

"Then why'd you ask me?"

"Aren't priests supposed to be honest?"

He closed his eyes briefly, thinking of all the ways he was lying to her, and the fact that it was ever more unlikely that he would get as far as taking his vows. Even in the dark behind his eyelids, he was conscious of her presence.

Abbey shifted, leaning part of her weight on the bed. "I'm sorry about Ron earlier."

He opened his eyes to frown up at her. "How is it supposed to be your fault?"

To his surprise, she actually contemplated the question briefly. "Because... I should have told him we were friends. I guess I didn't because with the hitchhiking and everything, he might... take it wrong. And so I didn't tell him, and he ended up taking it... even more wrong." She shrugged slightly. "I should have told him."

"And he should have trusted you. If I was your boyfriend, I would trust you," Jed said earnestly, and then he wished he could take the words back.

Abbey smiled, and made patterns in the blanket with her fingers. "How's your back?" she asked after a moment.

"It feels better," he said, mostly honestly.

"Let me see." She lifted the back of his sweatshirt, and ran her fingers lightly over the bruises.

Her touch made him suck in a breath and shiver. "You've got cold hands," he said. She did have, but it was still wasn't really the truth.

It was probably his imagination that made him think she lingered longer than she should have needed to. He could feel the ends of her hair tickle his back. "I'm sorry, am I hurting you?" she asked suddenly.

"No."

_It's nice._ But he didn't say that. Too many lines between them. Divisions that couldn't or shouldn't be crossed.

Abbey knew it too. After a moment she pulled away from him and straightened up. "So... I'll see you later, I guess."

"Yeah."

In the doorway she paused, and gave him a brief but brilliant smile. The image lingered with him long after she was gone.


	12. XII

** XII **

Ron hesitated a long time on the front path before he could bring himself to knock. Finally he did, and then wondered if he had time to run away before the door opened.

Out of the possible options for who could have answered the door, Abbey's mother didn't seem like such a bad deal. "Good morning, Mrs. Barrington," he said politely. "Um... could I speak to Abbey?"

From the way her mother remained unmoved, he knew Abbey had spilled that there had been a disagreement. "I'd like to apologise to her," he added for good measure.

Mrs. Barrington regarded him with pursed lips for a moment, then nodded briskly. "I think you'd better come in."

He walked inside cautiously, into a house where he'd previously been made nothing but welcome, but that now all of a sudden felt hostile. He passed through into the dining room... and stopped abruptly as he recognised the boy buttering toast at one end of the table. The boy paused in mid-action.

At the other end of the table, Dr. Barrington gave him a slight nod. "Ron." He followed Ron's gaze, and smiled thinly. "Jed's a family friend. He'll be staying with us for a while with a back injury."

And Ron felt like just about the biggest _idiot_ alive. He hesitated, then steeled himself, and stepped up to the plate.

He cautiously extended a hand. "I'd like to apologise for... being a complete and utter moron yesterday. I was totally insane. I'm sorry."

Jed stood up, and gave him a polite - if not excessively friendly - smile. "Hey, that's okay." He shook Ron's hand with a surprisingly strong grip.

"Did I hurt your back?" he asked worriedly.

Jed shook his head. "It's fine."

Ron sighed heavily, and brought a hand up to his forehead in depression. "Seriously, I'm sorry, man. I don't know what got into me. That was totally out of line."

Jed shrugged his forgiveness, and he looked up to see Abbey in the opposite doorway. "Good start," she said, though her voice and body language remained cool to him.

"Could I... apologise to you?" he tried tentatively.

She hesitated for a moment, then headed for the front door. "Come on."

He followed her out.

* * *

Abbey wasn't sure how she was supposed to be feeling about Ron right now. He'd come to apologise, and that was good... but then, he'd still been a complete jerk in the first place, and... and other, more complicated stuff.

She was working on an explanation for the prickly heat she'd sensed in the room between her and Jed the previous night. So far, it went somewhere along the lines of 'Male, bare skin, natural instinct'. What it lacked in finesse she thought it made up in believability.

Now, if only she could make herself believe it.

_He's gonna be a priest, you idiot. A priest. A_ priest. He didn't think of her like that; he didn't think of any girl like that. Even if there was a certain way he smiled sometimes...

But even priests were human, and if there _was_ something... Well, it wasn't because it was her. It could have been any girl. It didn't mean anything.

Just like Jed could have been any boy, and the feel of the smooth skin on his back...

Didn't mean anything.

Outside of the house, she folded her arms, and waited for Ron to speak. He lowered his head and spoke looking at the ground.

"I wanted to... I'm sorry, Abbey. I know I shouldn't have- I shouldn't have leapt to conclusions like that, I just... I missed you so much." He looked up at her, and the misery in his eyes took an unwelcome chip out of her core of righteous anger. "I was so worried, I just... You're so amazing and I know I don't deserve you, and sometimes I... Sometimes I worry you're just gonna wake up one day and realise that and wonder what you're doing hanging out with a loser like me."

Her heart was melting, but a little spark of anger still remained. "You should trust me, Ron," she said softly, echoing Jed's words of the night before. "How can we ever be anything if you don't trust me?"

"I know," he said miserably. "I... I screwed up, Abbey. I know that. And I know I probably don't deserve another chance."

Any resolve she might have had to tear a strip off him was slipping away. She guessed she understood, a little... the way it felt like the two of them had been sliding away from each other, growing apart. Oh, it still stung that he would ever suspect her of cheating, but...

But maybe, deep down, maybe there was just a tiny little bit of her that liked Jed... that way.

And that wasn't fair.

"Everybody deserves a second chance, Ron." She crossed to him, and gave him a brief hug. "But we can't just... I can't just pretend this hasn't changed anything," she said earnestly.

"I know," he agreed. She looked up to lock eyes with him.

"I'm gonna have to put you on boyfriend probation," she warned.

"Okay." He smiled softly. And she thought that Jed, no matter how mad she was at him, could never have resisted making some kind of a joke out of that.

And because she felt guilty to be thinking about Jed, she pushed herself up on tiptoes to give Ron a gentle kiss on the lips.

* * *

He was sitting up in his - Matthew's - room when she came back in. "How'd it go?" Jed asked her gently.

She offered him a fragile smile. "I made up with Ron," she said. "We're... we're not right yet, but... we made it up."

"Good," he said, and he smiled.

And something inside of him very quietly shattered.

But afterwards, he decided it was better that way. His feelings for Abbey... they were a dream. She was his friend, she was happy with Ron, and besides... maybe it wasn't really about her at all.

He was becoming increasingly sure that this was all some kind of elaborate fantasy his brain was constructing, trying to send him a message. Trying to tell him that he didn't belong in the priesthood, that this wasn't the life for him.

Abbey wasn't his dream girl, she was a message. Maybe even from God. God could call you to the priesthood; surely he could just as easily call you away from it, and tell you that you'd made a mistake. He wasn't in love, this wasn't really even an infatuation... this was just him, coming to terms with what he was and what he wanted to be.

And if Abbey was safely with Ron... well, that just made it easier to know that he was making this decision for himself, and not out of any hopeless romantic dreams. Because he'd made his decision.

He wasn't going to be a priest.

And even as he thought it, a great weight seemed to lift from his shoulders.

It almost made up for the heavy stone hanging suspended where he thought he'd once used to have a heart.

* * *

Daniel stopped in his study doorway, and smiled to see Jed frowning over an arrangement on the chessboard.

"Practising, son?"

"Yes, sir." He moved a piece.

"You think you can beat me?" he smiled.

"One day, sir," Jed said, with absolute confidence. Daniel was struck again by the complications inherent in this boy; there was a politeness and a hesitancy on the surface that made him seem quite shy, but if you looked a little deeper there was something infinitely less soft and yielding beneath it. In spite of whatever horrors his upbringing had held - or perhaps because of them - there was a core of greatness not so particularly well hidden inside Josiah Bartlet.

Daniel watched him play chess against himself for a few moments.

"I've been thinking," Jed said quietly, after a couple of moves.

"Mmm?"

"When term starts again, I'm going to see about transferring out of theology. I think I'll take economics. I always liked math." He made another move. "I'm not going to be a priest. I'm going to be..." He smiled slightly, and shrugged. "Something else."

"Are you now?" Daniel said softly, and he sat down opposite him. He'd suspected this was coming for a while, after seeing how progressively more uncomfortable Jed had become when anybody had mentioned his religious future. He'd just wondered if Jed himself was going to see it soon enough. "So tell me then, Jed... what are you going to be?"

Jed slowly smiled in reply, and after his solemn face the day before it was like watching the sun coming up. "I think I'm going to be... whatever I want to be."

"That sounds like a good idea," Daniel nodded, taking over the black pieces and making his move.

Jed countermoved. "It really does," he agreed.


	13. XIII

** XIII **

Kieran Clifton smiled to himself as he saw the young man hovering hesitantly outside his door.

"Ah, Jed," he said warmly. "Come in, come in."

Jed came in, but was unusually reluctant to sit down and settle.

"What is it, my son?" he asked finally, when the boy made no move to spit out his problem.

"Father, I-" He looked up, blue eyes clouded over with seriousness. "I've been doing some thinking. And I-" he ran a hand through his hair. "I don't think the priesthood is for me. I'm going to, uh... I'm going to transfer out of theology to take economics."

Kieran nodded slowly to himself. "Okay, son."

"It's- father, I'm sorry!" Jed blurted abruptly. "I wanted to- I-"

He stood up, and forestalled the young man's anguish with a hand to his shoulder. "Jed," he said gently. "The priesthood is a tough road to follow. It's not for everybody."

"But I-" He covered his face with a hand and sighed. "I know I could have been... you said I had potential, but..."

Kieran sat down and smiled up at him. "Josiah, you have the makings of a wonderful priest... but you have the makings of a great many other things as well. If the path feels wrong to you, it's better that you know it now than try to walk it against the advice of your heart."

Jed was silent for a few moments, looking at the ground. "I know that, father," he said finally. "But I still feel..." He shrugged, frustrated. "I feel like I've let you down."

The priest smiled quietly at him. "The priesthood is no place for caged birds, Jed. I'll let you into a little secret, one that my fellow clergymen sometimes seem to have a little trouble grasping. God doesn't want you to be unhappy. God loves you, Jed, and he's given you this life and asked you to dedicate it in his service. But that service doesn't have to mean these robes, and there are other deeds than prayer that are God's work."

"That's- that's what I feel!" Jed said, as if startled that his thoughts could possibly be echoed. "I just... Oh, I don't know." He sat down abruptly. "I've been thinking that I'd like to... I'd like to get married, maybe. Have a family. And I'd like to... I'd like to get out into the world and, and _do_ things." His face coloured. "I'm sorry, father, I didn't mean-"

"That's quite all right," he smiled. "I understand. You have the potential for greatness in you, Josiah Bartlet. Perhaps, indeed, God plans for you to be in other places than a seminary."

Jed smiled, the bright fresh smile of a soul suddenly lifted after confession. It was only as the expression dawned across his face that it was easy to see how much his indecision and confusion had been weighing him down.

Some men, Kieran knew, might have sternly chided Jed about giving in to temptation, told him he should be strong and stay true to his calling. And yes, it was a cruel blow to a religion always in need of fresh young blood to lose a man such as Josiah Bartlet... but he knew, just from looking at Jed's face, that he'd made the right decision.

"So tell me," he added, perhaps a little playfully. "This family you'd like... would there be a particular young lady you have in mind, perchance?"

Jed hesitated for a beat. "No father," he said, regretfully. "No, there isn't."

But Kieran suspected, from the way he'd seen Jed's eyes light up for a certain young member of the Barrington family, that perhaps he wasn't being entirely truthful.

* * *

"Hey." Ron smiled at her, and tilted his glass. "I'm just getting another drink. Sure you don't want one?"

"I'm sure," Abbey nodded, and made an effort to grin back.

"Okay. I'll be right back."

Ron headed over to the bar, and Abbey sighed to herself. What was wrong with her? This was a nice night out, it was a nice party, Ron was being sweet and attentive, just like he'd been in all the weeks since she'd put him on 'probation'... why wasn't she enjoying herself?

She'd hadn't used to mind going out to parties before. But now she felt oddly... stifled. Everybody was talking about such boring, mundane things, everybody seemed so... limited. She wanted to say "Let's blow this place, let's get out of here and find some real fun," but Ron wouldn't get it. Ron thought this _was_ fun.

This was supposed to be fun. Listening to the girls giggle about their boys, about who was stepping out with who and what they'd heard on the gossip network. Listen to the guys chat about sports and cars and whether this party was better than the one they'd been to at Steve's house last week.

Didn't anybody want to talk about anything _important_?

Maybe it was because she was one of the only ones not drinking... but Ron had only had a glass, and he was still enjoying himself, laughing at the dumb jokes and rubbing shoulders with all these... all these _people_. Who were these people? She was fairly sure she didn't know half of them. Whose party was this, anyway? The girl in the red dress, she thought... but she didn't even know who the girl in the red dress was, and she was willing to bet most of the people around her didn't, either.

Was this what a good time was supposed to be like?

Abbey was caught up in a strange mixture of guilt and frustration that had been building for some time now. Ron was trying so desperately hard for her, doing everything he could to be the best boyfriend he could be, all she could think was this wasn't where she wanted to be, these weren't the people she wanted to be with. It was all so, so... she didn't even know what it was.

But she knew it wasn't what she wanted.

Was it bitchy to look around at these people and think that if she tried to have a _real_ conversation with them, they wouldn't know what to do with it? Maybe, but on some level it was also true. She found herself guarding her words, trying to decide what to say and what to leave out, think what would be 'acceptable' and what would just make people look at her in a funny way.

She had to do that with Ron. How could Ron ever be the one, if she had to censor her conversation all the time because she knew if she started talking about dreams and politics and history and the state of the world, he wouldn't understand why she thought those things were so important? He'd listen and he'd be sweet and attentive and everything else like he should, but... he wouldn't understand why she _cared_.

Why did she care? She didn't know. Abbey just knew that somewhere out there was a world that was so much larger than the next party and the next good time. And she wanted to talk about it, she wanted to live in it, she wanted to _change_ it.

And Ron didn't want those things. He didn't hunger for more like she did. He didn't... he didn't _dream_.

Abbey looked across the room at her boyfriend, and suddenly felt something in her wrench. Could she see the two of them together in five years, ten, twenty... fifty?

Suddenly her eyes felt blurry and her legs felt weak beneath her. There was a lack of air in this room as if this party, these people, this _life_ was threatening to choke her.

Ron, crossing the room back towards her, looked worried. "Abbey?" He gripped her arm, and spoke loudly to overcome the noise of the party. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I just- I think need some air." She practically fled for the door, Ron trailing after her.

"Abbey?" he asked, looking down at her with brow wrinkled in consternation. "Are you all right? Are you sick? Do you want me to take you home?"

"I'm okay, I just feel a bit..." She didn't finish. "It's too oppressive in there. I'm not feeling too good. I need to clear my head."

"I'll walk you home," he offered immediately, heading back to get his coat.

"No!" she protested a little too vehemently.

He turned back towards her, looking confused and a little hurt.

"No, seriously, Ron, I'm, I'm okay." Abbey mustered a smile from somewhere. "You go back to the party. I just... need some space, or some air, or... something." She stumbled away from him, and didn't look back to see the expression of concern she knew would be on his face.

* * *

Jed frowned over his work; but it was mostly a good frown. It was hard work trying to cram everything at once; he was hoping to catch up on as much as possible so he could slip into the economics course for the second semester without too many bumps along the way. It was a hard slog, but it was _satisfying_. You chased the numbers around and finally you got them to a place where they fitted together and there they were, caught. Not like the nebulous issues of theology.

He found, to his relief, that he'd been feeling better about his religion since making his decision. He could feel like he was praising God because he wanted to, not because he was getting graded on it at the end of the semester. When he wasn't under so much pressure to come to a _conclusion_, questions of faith and of the soul became intriguing again.

Yes; although his roommates would have been both confused and horrified to hear as much, sitting alone up here doing math into the night, he was happier than he'd been in a long long time.

Of course, there was always the question of his father... But his father had never wanted him to take theology anyway, had certainly never wanted him to embrace Catholicism. Maybe if he could achieve his goal, if he could slide seamlessly over into the economics syllabus and score well by the end of the year, he would at least get... (_approval?_) ...acceptance.

So... things were good. He didn't feel quite so much like he was living in a hell of indecision anymore. He was hopeful, he was enjoying his work, he felt like the barriers that had grown up between him and God were beginning to peel back... Jed had everything he wanted.

Maybe not quite everything.

The image of Abigail Barrington rose up in his mind, but he pushed it down. He knew what that was, intellectually. She'd grown and taken on new dimensions in his mind in the midst of confusion, the way your first crush grew in your head into the most beautiful and amazing girl in all the world. She'd become a symbol, and that was why he'd become so obsessed with thinking about her. A symbol, not the real thing.

No matter how his heart grew tight and painful in his chest just seeing her across the aisle at church, it wasn't really the real thing.

Shaking his head at his relentless daydreaming, Jed threw himself back into his equations. Math would drive the confusing thoughts out. Math was good that way.

It was still failing miserably at being good that way when there was a hammering of knocks on the front door. He glanced at his watch, thinking it was a little early for Andy or Jason to be rolling home drunk and unable to find their keys. Well, just so long as they weren't going to make another attempt to drag him out with them...

When he got to the door and yanked it open, however, Jed had to wonder if his daydreaming hadn't tipped over the edge into sleep and actual dreams. For here was Abigail Barrington, standing outside his front door.

She smiled wanly at him.

"Hey there, Jethro. Mind if I come in?"


	14. XIV

** XIV **

Jed hesitated for a long moment. "Um... hey?" he said finally.

"Yeah." Abbey smiled and hugged herself. "I know it's late, I just-"

"Yeah, sure, come in," he said quickly, guiding her in with an arm across her shoulders. He closed the door, and she stood inside the hallway, looking awkward.

"What's wrong, Abbey?" he asked tentatively. She hadn't come to his house before; it wouldn't have been appropriate, even less so than him hanging around in her house on the night of the storm. This late at night with nobody about... there had to be a reason she was here.

Abbey's face crumpled, and she shook her head. "I just... I don't know. Me and Ron, we're not... I don't know."

She moved forward, and in some instinct that he hadn't known he had, he wrapped his arms around her. She rested her head against his shoulder, and he could feel her pulse and smell the scent of her hair. For a long moment they were both silent, and he fancied that the rhythm of their breathing became synchronised.

Abbey tilted her head to look up at him, and her eyes were so sad... "I don't know what to do, Jed," she confessed. "I really don't."

"It's okay," he said gently, and meant it even if he didn't know how to make it. "It's okay." Despite himself he found his hand moving to gently stroke her hair, and she gave a fragile smile. Their gazes locked and lingered for a long moment.

And then he kissed her.

Except he didn't. Because he wasn't that guy and she wasn't that girl, and... And.

Jed pulled back, and smiled at her softly, slipping his hands safely into his pockets. "You want some coffee?"

* * *

They sat on the stairs together, drinking coffee. Abbey perched halfway up while Jed sat with his back against the corner wall so he could look up at her.

"Seriously, I... I don't know what to think," she told him. "I- Ron's a _great guy_," she said, almost pleadingly, as if she was begging him to disagree with her.

And he wanted to. He wanted to cast Ron down and tell her all the ways that Ron was bad and wrong and no good for her. He wanted to tell her that Ron would treat her wrong, that he didn't love her, that she had to get out now and walk away.

And he wanted to stand up and move towards her, and let her see what it was in his eyes that he kept so guarded, let her see _him_, the real him, and then just... And then just let it be whatever it was going to be.

Oh, he wanted to. But he'd never been a liar, and the look in her eyes as she turned to him for comfort and for understanding...

He just wasn't that guy. He'd never been that guy.

Jed sighed, and looked down as he swirled the coffee in his cup. It was already growing cold, but he couldn't bring himself to drink it. He hadn't really wanted it, but he needed something to occupy his hands, and somewhere to turn his attention in the silences where speaking aloud would have damned him.

"He tries so hard for me, and I know he loves me so much, and..." She played with the ends of her hair. "I feel so bad, Jed," she burst plaintively. "I feel so bad that I don't- that he loves me so much and I just don't know how to feel."

"It's not your fault," he told her softly.

"It is my fault! I'm so cruel about him, Jed," she said. "In my head, I'm cruel about him. He's my boyfriend! How can I just... how can I just judge him like that? How can I just look at him, and see... and see all these things that I think are missing?" She fell silent for a beat. "Do you know what I was thinking at the party? I was thinking that he doesn't dream enough! As if anybody could ever tell that about another person."

"I think you dream enough for anybody." The words were torn from him before he had the time to consider their advisability.

Abbey smiled at him, almost shyly. "I was looking at him, and thinking that he's... he's content. He's happy where he is. He just wants things to keep going like they are, and I want-" She shook her head at herself. "I don't know what I want."

"Abbey-" his voice cracked in a way that he knew he shouldn't have let it, and he quickly looked away lest he meet her eyes in that exact moment. He wanted very much to reach out and take her hand, but that would be... That wouldn't have been right.

"I think," he continued, picking his words very carefully, "that you... you know where your own heart wants you to go. And if you could never be happy in... in being anything other that what you know you have to be, then..." Jed slowly looked up to meet her eyes. "You should never settle, Abigail. Never take less than what you deserve, because you deserve-"

He shook his head, not ready to finish that.

Abbey gave him a wry look over her coffee cup. "But am I settling for Ron... or am I just afraid?"

"I don't know," he said, because he couldn't trust his own gut feelings when he knew what lay behind them.

"Ron would... he'd never try to hold me back," she said earnestly, setting her drink aside. "I know that. Anything I wanted to do he'd be there, right behind me."

_But you want someone who'll be_ beside _you. Somebody to hold your hand and walk right out into the unknown with you._ He knew it, but he was distracted by the image of Abbey as a shooting star, blazing a trail through the darkness. Who could keep up with her? Who _could_ ever be the one to be beside her every step of the way?

The moment to speak was lost, and Abbey was moving onwards in her hesitant mental journey. "I know Ron wouldn't drag me down, so am I... am I just making excuses for myself? Am I just finding reasons to not be in love with him, to not let this be any realler than it is? Am I that afraid of being in love?"

"I think..." Jed hesitated, and spoke his heart. "I think being in love is strong, and it's powerful, and beautiful, and anyone who isn't a little bit afraid of it doesn't really know what it means. Love is... it isn't flowers and candy and holding hands at the prom, it's... it's _real_. It's something that, that moves inside of you, and it changes you, and... and how can you not be afraid of that?"

He looked up, and Abbey was smiling at him with something unreadable in her eyes. "You really have words, you know that? You know how to wrap things up in words when I'm still... when I'm still trying to figure out how to _think_ them."

Jed smiled sadly in response. "Sometimes I think my words don't do enough."

"Dad told me you transferred out of theology," she said softly. He looked up, startled.

"I didn't tell him that." He hadn't wanted... He didn't know why he hadn't wanted Abbey to know.

"Father Clifton did. I-" she smiled wryly. "Is it wrong of me to want to say 'good'? Because you would have been an amazing priest, but... There are so many other things you could be, too, and... and somebody deserves you. Somebody out there should have a Jed Bartlet to call their very own."

He couldn't even blush when so much of him wanted to cry. He could have said a thousand lines from a thousand stupid love songs, but none of them were right and none of them would have changed the fact that... this wasn't about him. It was about her, and she'd come to him because she trusted him, and she knew he'd tell her what she had to do.

And so he told her what she had to do.

"You should talk to Ron." He looked down at his undrunk coffee as he spoke, because he couldn't look at her. "You owe it to him. And you owe it to yourself. It's... I think anyone would be afraid, where you are. It's the people who aren't afraid; they're the ones who aren't ready. Being in love is... It isn't a little thing, and it shouldn't be. If it's easy to say 'I love you', then the words don't mean anything. It's natural to be afraid, to have doubts, to wonder what you're doing. But I know... You're brave, Abigail Barrington. You're one of the bravest people I know. And it's not in your nature to try and run away."

Abbey was silent for a long time, and he didn't know whether she was looking at him. Finally, she stood up, in a whisper of cloth against the stairs.

"You're right."

He smiled up at her, lopsidedly, where his head was tilted to rest his forehead against the wall. "I usually am."

"But you know what?" Her voice had lightened somewhat, and he rejoiced in it even as it twisted a knife through his heart. "You're brave too."

He snuffled quiet laughter at that. "I'm not brave."

She looked down at him in amusement. "You have no idea what you are, do you, Josiah Bartlet? Do you think every guy in the world can stand up at twenty and say 'I want to be a priest'?"

"I gave that up!" he refuted.

"Oh, and that was any easier?"

Jed stood up as she descended the stairs towards him.

"You don't just have dreams, you- you know how to turn them into new dreams! You just picked up your whole life and turned it around and said 'That didn't work, so now I'm doing something different'. You think that isn't brave?"

"I don't know what it is," he admitted.

She was one step above him, and now they were almost face to face, and this close he didn't think there was any way of hiding what might be in his eyes. And he thought for a second he saw something a lot like it in hers, but maybe that was just a reflection. And then she was descending the stairs past him, and the air was rushing back into the room, and he wished he could have been dying of oxygen deprivation for just a little longer.

Feet back on the ground in more ways than one down in the hallway, Abbey coughed a little self-consciously.

"So. Um, I should go."

_Please don't._ "Yeah."

She smiled awkwardly, and then blurted "Listen, I'm really sorry for coming round here and-"

"Don't even say it," he warned, catching her wrist in his hand to quiet her. Abbey sighed, and relaxed, and he felt the muscles in her arm move under his loose grip.

"You're a great friend, Jed," she said. She stood on tiptoe and rested her hands on his shoulders to plant a soft, lingering kiss on his cheek. "Thank you," she smiled softly, as she took a few tentative steps back.

Abbey hesitated in the doorway for so long he thought she might have something more to say, and then she turned and she was gone.

Jed stayed standing exactly where he was. If he moved so much as a tiny fraction of an inch, then he thought he might shatter into a billion pieces.


	15. XV

** XV **

She dialled the number tentatively, and waited for him to pick up. "Hi, Ron."

"Abbey!" The warmth in his voice should have been a delight, but in only made her feel more tense and nervous.

"Listen, I'm sorry I ran out on you last night-"

"Hey, that's okay. You weren't feeling good, I understand. I just wish you'd let me walk you home; it's not safe out there, Abbey."

"I know," she admitted. "Yeah, I was... I was totally weird last night, and I apologise."

He chuckled softly. "Hey, I'm used to you being weird. It's one of your best points."

"Yeah..." She hesitated, but then she remembered Jed's advice to her the previous night. She had to stop running away from her relationship with Ron. "Listen, do you want to come over for lunch or something?"

"Sure, I'd love to!" His pleasure at the invitation only made her feel guilty for how she'd been skirting around him lately. "I mean, if your parents don't mind-?"

"I already asked them, Ron," she smiled. He was such a sweet guy at heart; how had she lost sight of that lately? All this stuff with dreams and daydreams - that was crazy talk. Ron was her boyfriend, and she was more than lucky to have him.

"Great. Then I'll see you at-"

"Twelve'll be fine."

"Great," he repeated eagerly.

"I'll see you soon, then."

"Okay. Bye."

"Bye, Ron."

She was smiling as she put the phone down.

She just wasn't sure why the smile felt so false.

* * *

Something wasn't right. He'd been trying to ignore it for so long it made his brain ache, but... something wasn't right.

He'd put it down at first to the way he'd been a jealous idiot and thrown them right off track three months ago, but that excuse was getting more and more faded every time he recycled it. And the fact was that their little stage play in the train station hadn't been the cause of this, only a symptom. If he was honest with himself, Ron had known things were off between them before that.

It felt increasingly like they were talking at each other in different languages. He never quite knew what to say to her anymore, and he'd been increasingly worried that he just didn't know how to make her happy. And out of that had been born a scarier thought.

Maybe whatever it was that would make her happy wasn't something he knew how to give.

Ron sometimes caught himself yearning for a simpler girl to be with; one who just wanted to have fun, horse around, wanted to do the things that he wanted to do - and that made him feel painfully guilty. Yes, Abbey was complex; she could go from joking to serious in an instant, and her anger could be aroused over the strangest things - like by reading a book about some grand injustice that had happened a thousand miles away and centuries ago. She was so _passionate_ about everything, every tiny little thing, and she blazed so brightly... but he kept feeling like he was getting his fingers burned.

Once, Ron had considered himself the luckiest man alive to have got himself such an amazing girl... but now he wondered if it wasn't just as much a curse as a blessing. Oh, he wouldn't trade away a single second of the time he'd spent with her, but... He felt like he couldn't be the guy she needed, he couldn't follow her to all the places she wanted to go or be there in all the complicated, demanding ways she would need him to.

And that wasn't ever going to be fair on either of them.

There was a distance at the Barrington dinner table, and it wasn't the physical one imposed by her father's stern glare. The more he tried to talk, the more he realised that they didn't really have anything to say.

He pushed Mrs. Barrington's excellent food around the plate, not really able to find much taste for it.

"How's college?" she asked him, and he wondered if she was wincing internally at the lameness, the way he had been with all his own conversational gambits. It was like they were strangers at a cocktail party, looking for small talk to fill the awkward gaps.

"Oh, it's going pretty well. Most of it's pretty boring, but, you know, it's okay."

"My friend Jed's transferring over to do economics, did I tell you?"

"Yes, I think you did." Ah, the infamous Jed. On some completely irrational level, Ron was glad that Abbey's guy friend had transferred over to a similar course to he was doing; it made him feel _way_ less of a jerk for having accused his girlfriend of cheating on him with a trainee _priest_.

After weeks and weeks of awkwardness, he was now beginning to realise that a brief flirtation with another guy might have been an _easy_ problem to fix. You could win your girl back from the arms of the guy muscling in on you; how did you win her back from the fact that the two of you just didn't fit right?

"Oh. He's trying to cram first year now, though, so you'll graduate before him."

"Yeah."

More silence. He wondered if Abbey's parents had noticed it; it seemed screamingly obvious to him.

"We won the football last night, did you know?"

"Oh, no, I didn't." Of course she hadn't, because she didn't care about football, just another slice of his world that wasn't important in her one. "Did you play?"

"For a little. Didn't do anything particularly impressive. But you know, I didn't fall flat on my face either, so... it's all good."

She smiled. "Yeah."

But it wasn't.

It wasn't good at all.

* * *

"Well," Daniel said pointedly, as he followed his wife into the kitchen after the meal.

"Indeed."

"That was cozy, wasn't it? Just like all those Thanksgiving dinners with your parents."

"Complete with authentic awkward silences," Mary agreed.

He sighed, and leaned against the counter-top. "So what did they fight about?"

She gave him a look. "I don't think they did."

"Ah."

"Yes."

"I think she's unhappy," he said regretfully. It pained him to see his daughter in any kind of distress, but what could he do? He wasn't sure she'd even admitted to herself that anything was upsetting her. Abbey had his stubborn streak, that was her trouble. Things were clearly less than rosy with Ron, but she wasn't prepared to admit defeat and believe so.

"I think so too," Mary agreed heavily.

"She hasn't talked to you?" He'd been rather pinning his hopes on that mysterious female bond that existed between his wife and daughter. Matthew had always been much easier for him to fathom out...

"If she had, then I would know so," his wife pointed out.

He nodded sadly. "Alas, our little girl is at a time in her life when she doesn't think she needs parents."

"She needs a friend," Mary observed.

"Yes." He was silent for a long while as she busied herself collecting together dishes. Then he said, abruptly "You know what I haven't had in a long time?"

Mary paused, dishtowel in hand, and smiled slightly at him. "Am I going to be disturbed by the answer to this?"

He ignored that. "I haven't had a good game of chess, that's what I haven't had."

Her smile began to widen. "Is that so?" she said dryly.

"It's tragic, really." Daniel pushed back his glasses and rubbed his chin mock-contemplatively. "I really ought to get more practise in."

"Perhaps you should invite somebody over to play a game or two?" she suggested faux-brightly. He pretended to consider.

"Why, you might be onto something there. Tell me, is there anybody you can think of who might be interested in taking me on at chess?"

"Hmm..." She made such an exaggerated expression of deep thought that he had to laugh, and step forward to lightly kiss her cheek.

"I'll talk to him next time we're in church," he promised. Mary smiled warmly up at him.

"You're a good father, Daniel."

"Hmph." He pretended to shrug. "Well, I really don't see how my quest for a better class of chess partner figures into that at all..."

She smirked, and silenced him with another gentle kiss.


	16. XVI

** XVI **

"Good evening, Dr. Barrington," he said politely. Daniel smiled at him.

"Good evening, Jed. Won't you come on in?"

He had to hide a smile at the way the boy surreptitiously glanced about in search of his daughter. "Is Abbey around?" he asked, oh-so-casually.

"She's out with Ron at the moment."

"Oh." Jed tried to conceal the way his face fell, and didn't quite succeed at it.

"I'm sure she'll be back before we're done," said Daniel kindly. "You can talk then; no doubt you two have a lot to catch up on."

"Yes, sir." He hesitated, then suddenly blurted "Is she happy? I mean... She was a little down last time I spoke to her. I wondered if she seemed okay to you."

"Well, I don't know about that," he said, although he did, and the answer was definitely 'no'. "I think you should probably ask her yourself."

"Yes sir, I think I might," he agreed.

"Then you just go ahead and do that, son. I'm sure she's grateful to have such a concerned friend in you."

"Well, I hope so, sir," he agreed. But Daniel, watching closely, didn't miss the way he winced at the word 'friend'. Apparently, dear old good buddy Jed wasn't entirely happy about being stuck labelled that way.

It was probably, Daniel reflected, dreadfully bad parenting of him to be taking sides in any kind of brewing battle for his daughter's affections. Especially when most of the participants in said battle seemed bound and determined to pretend it wasn't happening. Any kind of parental intervention in the middle of that was definitely asking for trouble.

But dammit, he was going to do it anyway.

"Come on, Jed," he smiled. "Let's play chess."

* * *

He'd been planning to say it on the phone last night, but he'd chickened out and asked her to dinner instead. And then he'd planned to say it when he'd come to collect her from her house, but she'd been all dressed up and ready for their night out, and he couldn't drop it on her like that. And then they'd been in the restaurant, and he hadn't wanted to cause a scene or embarrass her...

And now they were walking home, hand in hand, and... he had to say it.

"Abbey..." Ron came to a halt.

She turned to look up at him, and God, she was beautiful. And God, he wished...

But no. He knew what he had to do. It was the only way, and delaying it was just making both of them miserable.

"What is it, Ron?" she asked softly.

He sighed heavily, and walked over to sit down on a nearby bench. She came over to join him, and he took her hand. "Abbey, this is... I think you know what I'm going to say."

"I think you'd better say it," she said, automatically defensive.

Oh God, could he? His throat suddenly felt dry and devoid of any voice.

"Abbey, I... this is..." He pulled away from her grip to rest his head in his hands. "This isn't working."

"What isn't?" she asked warily, although he knew she knew.

He looked up at her miserably. "We aren't, Abbey. We've been trying and trying and... we're just not working."

"Are you breaking up with me?" she asked. Despite the crushing inevitability of it all, her eyes were wide and hurt in the darkness, and he was reminded of the fact that those few years between them were a bigger gap of experience than they seemed. He knew he'd been her first real boyfriend.

Been. Past tense. Already in the past tense...

He felt like he was going to throw up.

"Abbey, I'm not breaking up with you... I don't even think we're even close enough to call ourselves together anymore." He held up a hand to forestall her injured comment. "We're so different, and we want such different things, and... and every time I'm with you, I feel like it's tearing me apart. I feel like- I feel like there's so many things you need me to be, and I don't know how to be them."

She was shaking her head in the darkness, and he could see the tears beginning to glisten. It made his own eyes burn uncomfortably. "I don't mean to," she said plaintively.

He smiled bittersweetly. "I know that, Abbey," he sighed. "But you belong..." He threw up a hand, gesturing at he didn't know what; the city, the outside world, the stars? "...Out there. You were born to be out there in the world, doing all these things, and... I wasn't. That's not me."

Ron knew, instinctively, that he wasn't destined for a life of grandeur and changing the world. Oh, he got top grades in his classes and the teachers predicted a sterling career, but inside of himself he ached for a simple, quiet life. A wife and children and a steady job and a regular routine and a world that was stable and comfortable. Abbey could never be happy in that world.

And he could never be comfortable in hers.

"But we could try," she pleaded, her voice barely even crossing the short distance between them.

"We've _been_ trying, Abbey," he said, and he heard the naked pain and frustration in his own voice. "We've been trying and trying, and it's not-" His voice broke. "It's not doing anything but making us both unhappy."

He stood up and she stood with him, laying a hand on his arm. He looked down into her eyes and saw a mirror of his own feelings. They'd wanted this to work so _badly_... and it just hadn't happened.

It just couldn't be.

"I love you," she whispered. It was the first time she'd ever said it to him, and it made his heart physically _hurt_.

"I know you do. And I love you." He shook his head softly. "But you're not in love with me."

She bit her lip and looked away, and even though he'd known it for so long, it was still a knife through his chest. Her face crumpled, and she buried it against his chest. He wrapped his arms around her, and laid his head against her hair.

Maybe for the last time. Oh, God, maybe for the last time.

The embrace lasted forever, and was all too brief. When she finally pulled away from him, he laid a brief kiss on her forehead. "I'm sorry," he said, and then he said no more because the words would have undone him.

A tear trickled down her face. "I'm sorry too, Ron."

She took a few steps back from him and hesitated, as if committing his face to memory. Committing him to the past.

"Goodbye, Ron," she said softly. He just smiled sadly.

And he wanted, more than anything, to fling out his arms to her, to call for her to come back. To say 'I love you, we can do this, why don't we give it one more try?'

But the hell of it was that... he really did love her.

And so he let her go.

Ron didn't meet anybody he knew on the way back home. It was just as well, because if he'd had to deny that he was crying, he wouldn't have been very convincing.

* * *

The tears felt like they were burning her, inside and out, but she just couldn't make them stop as she stumbled through the streets.

She'd known this was coming. Known it, known it, _known_ it. And yet, here it was, and-

Damn it!

Ron was right, and damn him too for being right. This had never been anything but doomed. She'd spent too long trying to convince herself that the places where they didn't fit together didn't matter, that just because they had so little they shared didn't mean they couldn't love each other, that if they just kept trying _hard_ enough, then they could make it work.

They'd both known it was coming.

And it didn't make it hurt any less.

It was just as well there was so little traffic about on the way back to her house, because her own tears were blinding her as she walked... walked faster and faster, as if by running she could somehow leave the pain and the frustration far behind.

It wasn't fair. Ron was a nice guy, Ron was a great guy... it never should have ended like this. How come the movies never showed you this? That sometimes you could be two great people and do everything right and it still just didn't work?

They were just wrong for each other. No bad guys, no melodramatic tragedies, no 'other woman', no screaming matches... They were just... wrong for each other.

It was better, Abbey supposed somewhere deep down, that they broke it off now than kept trying and trying and killing themselves to make it work when it just wouldn't.

She supposed.

Funny how that really didn't make her feel any better.


	17. XVII

** XVII **

Jed sprang to his feet at the sound of the front door, and then flushed with embarrassment at his own obvious eagerness. Daniel smirked, and might have made a playfully cutting remark if he hadn't suddenly heard his wife's worried "Abigail?"

He heard his daughter mutter something indistinct and rush through and out into the back yard. He and Jed spilled worriedly out into the hall.

Mary met his eyes, looking dismayed but not particularly shocked. "Abbey broke up with Ron," she revealed.

"Ah."

Daniel caught Jed making a little move like a flinch out of the corner of his eye, but by the time he turned, the younger man was still.

His face, however, was an open book of concerned sympathy and agitation. Daniel tilted his head towards the back door pointedly. "Why don't you go out and talk to her, son?"

"Me?" He seemed honestly startled.

Mary smiled gently at him. "She probably needs a friend right now, Jed."

"Yeah." His voice was heavy with a kind of resignation, and Daniel watched him as he headed out to join their daughter. He looked across at Mary.

"What happens now?"

She shrugged, and raised her eyebrows at him. "You're not worried about sending that obviously love-struck young man out to your only daughter in her hour of vulnerability?"

He considered that for a moment. "No."

"Why not?"

"Because he's not that kind of boy," he answered without hesitation. "And because I think... he's the right man, at the right time."

Mary nodded slowly, and smiled. "I think so too."

He slipped an arm around her, and smiled back. "I think our little girl's in safe hands."

* * *

She was sitting on the back step, arms wrapped defensively around her knees. Jed sat down beside her and mimicked the posture. They both stared out into the night.

"I knew it was coming," Abbey said after a long silence. Her voice was thick from where she'd obviously been tearful.

"Still hurts, though."

She barked a painful laugh. "Does it ever."

He briefly rubbed her back in sympathy, and she meant too much to him for it to ache that the gesture was purely platonic.

"Did you guys fight?" he asked softly.

She laughed again, a quiet, self-directed chuckle, and shook her head. "No, we just... We just..." She shrugged, and sighed.

"Sometimes people just don't work out," he reminded her gently. Not minimising her pain, just trying to blunt the force of the guilt that came with it. "Sometimes it's nobody's fault."

"I still feel like it's mine," she admitted. He was silent, and she turned towards him curiously. "Aren't you supposed to leap to tell me that it's not?" she asked, half-smiling despite the tear-streaks on her face.

Jed brushed back a strand of hair that was threatening to stick there. "You know it's not," he said, with a quiet smile.

"Yeah." She sighed again, and tilted her head back to rest it against the door behind them. "There's a lot of stars up there," she observed, after a moment.

He looked up. It was a clear night, and the sky was well-sprinkled with gently flickering lights. "They're always up there," he pointed out.

"You know what I mean," she said, giving his shoulder a gentle shove.

"Yeah."

They stargazed for a while, and his eyes were gradually drawn to the crescent moon.

"They're gonna put a man on the moon one day, you know," he told her.

Though his gaze remained skywards, he was conscious of her turning to look at him. "You really think they'll do it?" she asked quietly.

His mouth curled upwards into a confident smile. "Yeah. And when they've done that, they're gonna go to Mars. And once they've been to Mars, they'll go to all the other planets. And then they're gonna take us to the stars. And then, when we get to the stars, we're gonna look around, and we're gonna say... 'What's next?' Because that's what we do. We just keep on going, no matter what. We keep on saying 'What's next?'."

She laid her head against his shoulder, and he could picture her warm smile. "Let me guess; you wanted to be an astronaut when you were younger?"

"I wanted to be _everything_ when I was younger," he admitted. "I still do."

"You're a dreamer," she accused him lightly.

He shrugged, causing her to pull away from his shoulder. "Somebody's got to do it."

"Yeah." She ran her hands back through her air, and massaged her neck as if it ached. "Sometimes I think it would be easier if I wasn't a dreamer, though," she reflected quietly. "If I could just... if I could just look at things the way they are, and be content. Maybe we'd all be happier if we were that way."

"Maybe," Jed admitted. He turned to look at her in the darkness. "But how would we ever get to the stars?"

She smiled, and wrapped her arms around him. He held her for a moment, a little oasis of warmth and contentment in the middle of the darkness.

"You feel better?" he asked her gently as she pulled away.

"A little." She went back to hugging her knees.

"It's never easy, letting things go," he told her quietly. Thinking of the priesthood, and of searching for his father's affection, and of all the things he'd ever thought or hoped he'd be along the way. All the dreams he'd left behind... but there were always new dreams.

"No," she agreed. "Still, you know, I guess... I guess it had to end sometime."

"Yeah."

"And..." Her voice changed tone, subtly, although he wasn't quite sure what it meant. "And at least it means I can do something I've been wanting to for quite a while now."

Jed's brow wrinkled. "What's that?" he asked her.

Abbey laid her hands to either side of his face, and tilted his head around to look at her. "Idiot," she said fondly.

And then she kissed him.

** THE END **


End file.
